Heavy metals are here treated as light metals and, in general, are not further considered. The heaviness of naturally occurring metals such as gold, copper, and iron may have been noticed in prehistory and, in light of their malleability, led to the first attempts to craft metal ornaments, tools, and weapons. All metals discovered from then until 1809 had relatively high densities; their heaviness was regarded as a singularly distinguishing criterion. From 1809 onwards, light metals such as sodium, potassium, and strontium were isolated. Their low densities challenged conventional wisdom and it was proposed to refer to them as "metalloids" (meaning "resembling
Heavy metals of heavy metals are generally given as greater than 20 (calcium); sometimes this is capped at 92 (uranium). Definitions based on atomic number have been criticised for including metals with low densities. For example, rubidium in group (column) 1 of the periodic table has an atomic number of 37 but a density of only 1.532 g/cm, which is below the threshold figure used by other authors. The same problem may occur with atomic weight based definitions. The United States Pharmacopeia includes a test for heavy metals that involves precipitating metallic impurities as their coloured sulfides." In 1997, Stephen Hawkes, a