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this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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You can work glass and plastic the way you can because at a certain temperature range their plasticity and viscosity are conducive to working them in that manner.
Iron has plasticity at a temperature, but lacks the viscosity until it gets too hot to have the plasticity needed. If you had a molten blob of iron in space and tried to inflate it, the material would get a hole blown in the side instead of inflating and stretching out because the working properties aren't right.
What if the substance was only one part iron?
An alloy would have to have the working properties needed, but all "metals" have the same problem of viscosity and plasticity not overlapping.
That would no longer be iron, then. It would be an alloy. Steel is the most common example of an iron alloy and it exhibits different properties based on the ratio of carbon and other elements.
Ditto goes for most alloys. Glass-like properties aren't typical, otherwise metal blowing would be a thing.
There might be alloys that can do this, but not the usual ones. Some of the low-melting ones can be gooey-seeming, off the top of my head.