Which are more brittle: metals or nonmetals?

Looking at the arrangement of on we find that there are three families or groups that have a metal, a metalloid and a non-metal in the set of elements....

Because the delocalised electrons are free to move. Metallic bonds are formed by the electrostatic attraction between the positively charged metal ions, which form regular layers, and the negatively charged...

But of course the most abundant in our universe are (i) hydrogen, and (ii) helium, another non-metal. See for a percentage breakdown.

Metals are shown in blue to the left of the zigzag. Non-metals are to the right, in green. All the in a group have similar properties. For example group one...

$"Ductility"$...the ability to be drawn out into a wire.... $"Conductivity"$ with respect to heat... $"Conductivity"$ with respect to an electrical current... All of these properties are conceived to arise from...

Nonmetals tend to gain electrons in order to achieve a full outer shell, so they are said to have high electronegativities. Alkaline metals, for example, would find it much...

There are about a 100 or so ; most of which are metals. All of these metals, with one or two exceptions are solids under the given conditions. Can you...

Malleability, the ability of a material to be hammered out into a sheet (from the Latin, $"malleus, hammer"$, is a fundamental property of metals. Solid non-metals, e.g. diamond, sulfur, iodine,...

The differences among metals, non metals and metalloids are not so clear as one could think, though the metallic properties increase going from the top to the bottom of the...

Nonmetals have relatively high electronegativity, so both atoms in the bond want to keep the electrons that are being shared between them. This creates a covalent bond. If one...