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Tool-Lifes

Materials of the world — metals, textiles, fire and insulation

Thirty-two materials taken apart seven ways: where each came from, how it is structured, what it measures, how it is made, where it is used, how it fails in fire and weather, and the markets that price it.

Across the atlas

Browse every material

Filter by family or name — works without leaving the page.

🔩

Steel

The iron–carbon workhorse of buildings, ships, rails and tools — endlessly recast.

Overall 66
🥫

Aluminium

Light structural metal from Hall–Héroult cells — aircraft skins, cans and façades.

Overall 59
✈️

Titanium

High specific strength and chloride-tolerant films — airframes, implants and seawater.

Overall 58
🔶

Copper

The first industrial conductor — wiring, heat exchangers, roofs that go green.

Overall 57
🍴

Stainless steel

Chromium passive films that keep kitchens, chemical plant and façades from rusting like carbon steel.

Overall 64
🌱

Cotton

Seed-hair cellulose that dressed the industrial revolution — still the comfort fibre of daily wear.

Overall 44
🐑

Wool

Crimped keratin that traps still air — suiting, carpets and a quietly decent fire story among apparel fibres.

Overall 53
🦋

Silk

A kilometre-class animal filament — luxury cloth, sutures and a template for bio-inspired fibres.

Overall 41
🎽

Polyester

The dominant apparel polymer — bottle-grade PET spun into staple that dries fast and sheds microfibres.

Overall 49
🪢

Nylon

Carothers’ polyamide — stockings, tyre cord, climbing rope and a melt-drip fire personality.

Overall 48
🦺

Aramid

Aromatic polyamide pulps and filaments — ballistic packs, hot-gas filtration and asbestos replacement.

Overall 62
🧴

Polyethylene

The world’s volume plastic — bags, bottles, pipes and the UHMWPE cousin in medical and ballistic fibre.

Overall 40
🍳

PTFE

Plunkett’s slippery fluoropolymer — non-stick, chemical linings and a high-temp plastic that still has a fire-and-fume story.

Overall 41
🛞

Natural rubber

Cis-1,4-polyisoprene from Hevea — tyres still drink most of the world’s latex.

Overall 44
🫧

Silicone

Si–O backbone elastomers and resins — bakeware, medical tubing, façade sealants and a kinder high-temp story than carbon chains.

Overall 55
🪟

Glass

Frozen silicate liquid — windows, bottles, fibres and a Euroclass A1 skin that still shatters and melts in fire.

Overall 58
💎

Technical ceramics

Crystalline oxides and carbides for heat, wear and electronics — not the mug on the desk.

Overall 64
🏗️

Concrete

The hydraulic ceramic of cities — cement, water, rock and usually steel, with a fire story better than exposed steel.

Overall 57
🌲

Wood

Anisotropic cellulose composite grown as trees — carpentry, mass timber and a combustible story that codes still manage.

Overall 57
🏎️

Carbon fibre

Polymer-derived filaments with graphite-like sheets — aero, bikes and a fire story that is about the resin, not the fibre.

Overall 49

Graphene

A one-atom carbon sheet — Nobel-era physics, composites hype, and a few honest electronics and barrier uses.

Overall 50
☁️

Aerogel

A nanoscale silica sponge — among the lowest solid λ values, fragile unless blanketed, and A1 when purely inorganic.

Overall 60
🩺

Nitinol

Near-equiatomic Ni–Ti that remembers shape and super-elasticates — stents, orthodontics and actuators.

Overall 48
☀️

Perovskite (PV)

ABX3 halide crystals that jumped laboratory solar efficiency — still fighting humidity, lead and lifetime.

Overall 26
🪨

Mineral wool

Melted rock or glass spun into A1 batts — the default non-combustible insulation of codes.

Overall 69
🧽

Polyurethane foam

The low-λ organic foam of fridges and buildings — excellent insulation, a fire design problem unless PIR and coverings are honest.

Overall 46
📦

Vacuum insulated panel

A sealed vacuum sandwich — λ around 0.004–0.008 W/m·K until the envelope leaks.

Overall 44
🕯️

Phase-change material

Latent-heat packets that flatten temperature swings — not a substitute for λ insulation, a complement.

Overall 36
🏠

Gypsum board

CaSO4·2H2O panels that buy fire time by calcining — the everyday A2/A1 lining of interiors.

Overall 59
👨‍🚒

Nomex

DuPont’s meta-aramid — fire-fighter turnout, electrical paper and a char that does not melt-drip like nylon.

Overall 65
🧯

Intumescent coating

Paints that swell into insulating char — the thin-film way to give steel an R-rating without bulky boards.

Overall 58
🌡️

Ceramic fibre

Spun refractory fibres for 1000–1400 °C — kiln linings, gaskets, and a respirable-fibre caution that AES grades try to ease.

Overall 62