Bodycote, Macclesfield, England, has produced the Periodic Table of Fictional Metals, elements that have appeared in classical myths, books, films, comic books, and computer games for many years, as creative people invented metals with mythical or magical qualities.
Bodycote has a long history of working with real metals to increase their performance and meet customer requirements. Sometimes, though, in the myriad worlds of fiction, real metals just don’t do what the author needs.
Popular culture has given us an extensive list of metals and alloys with fantastical qualities. In addition to Marvel Comics, whose ‘vibranium’ and ‘adamantium’ are probably some of the best known due to recent cinematic releases, fictional metals have appeared in popular science fiction movies such Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who; TV shows such as Game of Thrones and the X Files; literature such as The Lord of The Rings; and video games such as the popular Minecraft franchise.
For example, the Bodycote table reveals that Greek mythology introduced adamantine (Adt), a strong hard metal that made a “sickle or sword used by the hero Perseus to decapitate the Gorgon Medusa while she slept.”
Rearden Metal (Rem) was invented by Hank Rearden, the protagonist in Atlas Shrugged. “This greenish-blue metal is lighter and stronger than steel. The first product made from the metal was a bracelet, then railway tracks for the Rio Norte Line.”
Explore all these fascinating materials and many more in the interactive Periodic Table of Fictional Metals.
http://www.bodycote.com/fictional-metals
