ABSTRACT
Like wood, metal comes in rods, sticks, sheets, and other shapes. You can fi nd it in plates of various thicknesses and widths like sticks of lumber, but if you built objects out of solid metal, it would quickly become far heavier than you can handle. Instead, we tend to use hollow shapes of metal, such as tubes, pipes, and “box tube,” which are square and rectangular tubes that come in any width and thickness you can imagine. “Structural shapes,” such as angle iron, I-beams, and channels, are also used.
