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Osmium is a hard, brittle, blue-gray metal, and the densest stable element—about twice as dense as lead. The density of osmium is slightly greater than that of iridium ; the two are so similar (22.587 versus 22.562 g/cm 3 at 20 °C) that each was at one time considered to be the densest element.
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Osmium is a hard but brittle metal that remains lustrous even at high temperatures. It has a very low compressibility. Correspondingly, its bulk modulus is extremely high, reported between 395 and 462 GPa, which rivals that of diamond (443 GPa). The hardness of osmium is moderately high at 4 GPa.
The chemical elements can be broadly divided into metals, metalloids, and nonmetals according to their shared physical and chemical properties.All elemental metals have a shiny appearance (at least when freshly polished); are good conductors of heat and electricity; form alloys with other metallic elements; and have at least one basic oxide.
The more slip systems a metal has, the less brittle it is, because plastic deformation can occur along many of these slip systems. Conversely, with fewer slip systems, less plastic deformation can occur, and the metal will be more brittle. For example, HCP (hexagonal close packed) metals have few active slip systems, and are typically brittle.
Heavy metals is a controversial and ambiguous term [2] for metallic elements with relatively high densities, atomic weights, or atomic numbers.The criteria used, and whether metalloids are included, vary depending on the author and context and has been argued should not be used.
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Refractory metals have high melting points, with tungsten and rhenium the highest of all elements, and the other's melting points only exceeded by osmium and iridium, and the sublimation of carbon. These high melting points define most of their applications. All the metals are body-centered cubic except rhenium which is hexagonal close-packed.