I’m just an amateur guy who messed with metal on occasion
And straight up not following the logic
I know heating and quenching makes it harder, which is good for knives and such, but also makes it more brittle I guess? And likely to crack?
The descriptions on this subject are literally “over explaining the scientific molecular composition of metal” or “so anyway make hot then make un hot, dat good”
But I was trying to bend some metal today, heated it up a few times and got it near its shape, then cooled it by quenching so no one would grab it and burn their hands on it while I stepped away, came back and heated again and it just broke lol
In: Other
The answer is it depends.
Metal atoms form crystal structures, and there are many different structures that the atoms can form depending on their properties and what other elements are alloyed in there.
You could spend an entire academic career learning about crystal structures and material science in general.
To keep it as brief as possible, [Steve Mould has a great video with a perfect visual analogy using metal balls.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuL2yT-B2TM).
Honestly, just watch that.
It’ll show how crystal structures form “grains”, how the size of those grains can change and how they’re affected by temperature, etc.
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