A metal (from Greek μέταλλον métallon, "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typically malleable (they can be hammered into thin sheets) or ductile (can be drawn into wires). A metal may be a chemical element such as iron; an alloy such as stainless steel; or a molecular compound such as polymeric sulfur nitride.Iron, shown here as FRAGMENTS and a 1 cm3 cube, is an example of a chemical element that is a metal.A metal in the form of a gravy boat made from stainless steel, an alloy largely composed of iron, carbon, and chromiumIn physics, a metal is generally regarded as any substance capable of CONDUCTING electricity at a temperature of ABSOLUTE zero.[1] Many elements and compounds that are not normally classified as metals become metallic under high pressures. For example, the nonmetal iodine gradually becomes a metal at a pressure of between 40 and 170 thousand times atmospheric pressure. Equally, some materials regarded as metals can become nonmetals. SODIUM, for example, becomes a nonmetal at pressure of just under two million times atmospheric pressure.In chemistry, two elements that would otherwise qualify (in physics) as brittle metals—arsenic and antimony—are commonly INSTEAD recognised as metalloids due to their chemistry (predominantly non-metallic for arsenic, and balanced between metallicity and nonmetallicity for antimony). Around 95 of the 118 elements in the periodic table are metals (or are likely to be such). The number is inexact as the boundaries between metals, nonmetals, and metalloids fluctuate slightly due to a lack of universally accepted definitions of the categories involved.