The color of bronze
 

I am a bit confused about this.
In my history book, I have seen picture of ancient preserved bronze weapons.
Their color was dark brown, with no specular light or reflection.
I wonder if that was also the original color of those bronze weapons? or was it more shiny and with reflection? because I think some of today's bronze products are more shiny and reflective?
If there is a picture to demonstrate this it would be very good.

Thanks in advance.

Bronze can take many different colors depending on the relative amounts of copper and tin, and how the bronze is treated. It is also possible to create many different patinas artificially. There is some helpful information on these sites:

http://www.grayson.edu/grayson/homep...rks/bronze.htm
http://www.whiteriverfoundry.com/bro...ina_basics.htm
http://www.mckaylodge.com/tylerdavid...technical.html

Bronze is distinguished from brass metallurgically based on the metals included in the alloy -- brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. Just looking at an object, it can be very difficult to distinguish between brass and bronze.

Ian.

All I would add to what Ian has said is that brass seems a little more yellow than bronze, again depending on the amount of copper is present.

Colors of old bronze artifact are mainly due to patination which is environment dependant. Bronze compositions are varied, even within a culture. There are recipe for 2-9 (and 9+) components alloy for Siamese bronze. Some of them go closer to brass and some of them contains gold. So you can find a full spectrum of red to yellow color. And evenmore complicate, different alloy element makes different patination rate. There 's a microscopic analysis for fake patination but it 's quite difficult to determine origin/composition/age of bronze by their colors. :D