Sectility

Look up sectility in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Sectility is the ability to be cut into pieces. Metals and paper are sectile.

Sectility can be used to distinguish minerals of similar appearance, and is a form of tenacity.[1] For example, gold is sectile but pyrite ("fool's gold") is not.

Sectility in metals is a result of metallic bonding, where valence (bonding) electrons are delocalized and can flow freely between atoms, rather than being shared between specific pairs or groups of atoms, as in covalent bonding.

References


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/11/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.