ductility is the ability for a metal to be
Ductility Ductility is a measure of a material's ability to undergo significant plastic deformation before rupture, which may be expressed as percent elongation or percent area reduction from a tensile test. According to Shigley's Mechanical Engineering Design--10th Ed. [1] significant denotes about 5.0 percent elongation (Section 5.3, p. 233). See also Eq. 2-12, p. 50 for definitions of percent elongation and percent area reduction. Ductility is often characterized by the material's ability to be stretched into a wire.
Properties of metals, metalloids and nonmetals Metals comprise the large majority of the elements, and can be subdivided into several different categories. From left to right in the periodic table, these categories include the highly reactive alkali metals; the less reactive alkaline earth metals, lanthanides and radioactive actinides; the archetypal transition metals, and the physically and chemically weak post-transition metals. Specialized subcategories such as the refractory metals and the noble metals also exist.