What is brass made of?

Brass

Brass is a yellowish metal made by melting copper and zinc together.  Brass is hard and strong and holds a bright finish. Many of the metal things we use today are made of brass.

Brass is a long wearing, yellowish-colored metal that is used in making such familiar things as brass doorknobs, pins and brass musical instruments.  It has a great many other important uses as well.

But no one has ever heard of brass mines.  That’s because there are not any.  Brass is not a single metal, as is gold or iron.  It is a mixture of two metals – copper and zinc.  A mixture of this kind is called an alloy.

In making brass, the copper is melted in an electric furnace.  Small pieces of solid zinc are then added to the melted copper.  The zinc dissolves in the motion copper in much the same way salt may be dissolved in water.

When the mixture cools, it hardens into a metal that is much stronger and tougher than pure copper, and therefore resists wear better.  Brass can be polished to a bright finish.-Dick Rogers