Details of a new process have been revealed, for alloying electrochemical production of iron, either for making iron (and oxygen!) on the moon or making electrolytic iron (and oxygen) on earth. The original process was developed for release of oxygen from moon rocks, using iridium metal electrodes. The new process uses chromium-iron electrodes.

The process has the potential to further reduce the carbon dioxide produced during steelmaking, when combined with electricity production from ‘carbon-dioxide neutral’ source.

Correlation is not causation?

Link to youtube video by Liberal Viewer

First Website as seen in 2013

http://info.cern.ch/is the location of the first website, currently at the url you can read information about the first web site, including a link to a copy of the website from 1993 1993 website

Tim Burners Lee

The earliest available phase transformation group website is from 1997 and can be found here: http://web.archive.org/web/19970427151128/http://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/phase-trans/. No news yet about if Harry Bhadeshia has plans to recreate the first PT-group website.

Way back machine – an archive of the internet

Boeing says it put 200,000 “engineer hours” into fixing the problem, with staff working round the clock. They have not been able to find the source of the burning which took place which grounded the all 787s, instead they have had to identify all the possible ways the heating could take place and introduce measures to

Addis Ababa to Nairobi

Mr Eaton was convicted by Sheriff Michael O’Grady QC, and received the maximum possible sentence of three months, the Sheriff said his powers were inadequate for this case, and a longer sentence would be justified. Mr Eaton’s defence lawyer, claimed his client did not benefit financially from the fraud, as he was only making £35,000 per year.

Mr Eaton was reported by his employers after they became suspicious and reported him to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.

Story with generic science pictures can be found also at these sites:

http://news.stv.tv/scotland/221777-steven-eaton-faked-research-data-for-experimental-anti-cancer-drug/

http://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/top-stories/scientist-jailed-for-faking-research-data-1-2898750

Structure of superbainite. Inset is a same-scale image of a carbon nanotube. [1]

Glancing at the media, however, one would be forgiven for assuming that steel is now a has-been. We are bombarded with stories of novel materials: carbon nanotubes, metallic glasses, graphene, carbon fibre, nickel superalloys. . . all of which are “stronger than steel”.

“Now we can construct space elevators!” claim the articles. “Let’s build a climbing frame to the moon! We’ll use this stuff to make everything!”

The observant among us, however, will note that most cars, trains and buildings still don’t feature superalloys, metallic glass or magic nanotubes. Neither are they invisible; nor do they fly; nor do they do any of the other things that journalists tend to ‘predict’.

Instead, steels somehow remain the best — and cheapest — materials for the job. Also, they are stronger than steel. This is because ‘steel’ is a vague construct used by sensationalists, with an unspecified strength guaranteed to be less than that of a novel material. Metallurgists rarely refer to ‘steel’, just as the Inuit have fifty words for snow, not one of which is ‘snow’.

Steels, on the other hand, are alloys with a colourful variety of properties: strength, toughness, hardness, ductility and wear resistance. They are everywhere: railways, pipelines, bearings, jet engines, armour, nuclear reactors. . . and more. Many of these technologies are cutting-edge in their design, and require high-performance steels to match.

The benefits of steels lie first and foremost in their versatility. Iron atoms can ‘stack’ themselves in various distinct configurations (just like a greengrocer stacking oranges — there are different ways to do it). Each configuration is known as a ‘phase’. As well as the two main iron phases (austenite and ferrite) there is a carbide phase — a compound of iron and carbon (Fe3C) — called cementite.

These phases often exist in combinations and have different properties. For example: cementite is strong and brittle, whereas ferrite is softer and tougher. If we combine them into a structure called pearlite (consisting of alternating layers of ferrite and cementite), we produce a steel that is reasonably strong and tough.

The ability to harness the properties of different steel phases has been around for centuries. The temperature and composition of the steel determines which phases can form. By heating and cooling different areas of a sword in different ways, ancient Japanese swordsmiths could produce a steel blade that was soft and tough in the interior, with an incredibly hard cutting edge.

Today, heat treatment is still used to produce phases or combinations of phases with desirable properties. Alloying elements can also modify the properties: manganese and chromium increase strength; molybdenum prevents embrittlement. It is the metallurgist’s role to explore new methods of heat treatment and alloying in order to produce novel steels.

‘Superbainite’ is one such alloy. It is designed for high-strength applications and is currently one of the strongest metals in existence. Its strength comes from an incredibly fine microstructure consisting of two phases: ferrite and austenite, and it is the morphology of the phases that is important. The ferrite is in the form of plates, separated by thin films of austenite.

In order to deform a metal, it is necessary to force its atoms to change position relative to each other. However, an interface (such as the boundary between two phases, marking a change in the atomic arrangement) acts as a barrier to this atomic ‘rearrangement’, and it becomes harder to deform the material. By refining the microstructure, we can create more interfaces and increase the strength of a metal. The structure of superbainite is unusually fine: the ferrite plates are as thin as 20 nanometres.

The unusually fine structure of superBainite is a result of the displacive transformation, this also result in a characteristic surface relief.

This scale is typically difficult to achieve because it requires very low transformation temperatures (200°C compared to a conventional 400°C). When transforming from one phase to another, steels can release heat, limiting how much they can be cooled. The problem was overcome by harnessing a different type of transformation — the bainite transformation — that re-absorbs the heat that is released. The high density of interfaces in superbainite is the origin of its strength.

But strength, for all its virtues, is not the only important property of a metal. Ductility (how much the metal can be deformed before it fractures) and toughness (resistance to crack propagation) are also key. Yet if a steel is very strong, it may have low toughness or ductility. The real challenge is to obtain an optimum combination of several properties.

Some steels make use of an unusual property of phase transformations. It is possible to induce a change from one phase to another not by heating but by deforming the metal. Deformation involves atomic movement, so it is conceivable that the iron atoms can change configuration, producing a different phase. This can enhance the ductility of steels while retaining their strength, a phenomenon known as transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP).

Returning to superbainite, we find that the two-phase microstructure is a double-edged sword. It is suspected that the TRIP effect is converting the softer austenite into a much harder, more brittle form of iron, resulting in low toughness. If we are to design superbainitic alloys for applications that require high degrees of impact resistance (such as armour), we must identify and remedy the causes of these poor properties, without losing the strength for which it has become famous.

We must also try to accelerate the transformation. While it is desirable to transform superbainite at very low temperatures, it can take 10 days or longer to complete the treatment. A sample of the alloy designed to transform at room temperature currently sits in the Science Museum in London. At the start of its 100-year transformation time, it gives us a glimpse of what we may be able to achieve in the future. There are many exciting advances still waiting to be made. Why pin our hopes on expensive, rare and exotic alternatives, when we are living in the Steel Age?

1. C. Garcia-Mateo, F. G. Caballero and H. K. D. H. Bhadeshia, Development of Hard Bainite, ISIJ International (2003), 43, 1238-1243

Charts from http://bitcoincharts.com/

News media has had a lot of stories talking up the price rise and the fall.

This rapid adjustment in price against the dollar has been described as a crash.

If we take a look on a logarithmic chart of the bitcoin price against dollars, we can see similar movements have occurred before. I think this would count as a crash for a centrally managed currency because it would call into question the managing authorities ability to provide price stability.

Donkey Kong Pauline Edition

Inspired by this others have produced a peach edition of Super Mario Brothers.

Super Mario Bros Peach Edition

An open source project has already solved this problem, an open source clone of “Super Mario World” had been produced called “Secret Maryo Chronicles” which features a female character as the lead. I had a bit of problem playing this game but I think it problem of playing with keyboard rather than controller… at least that is my excuse for not being able to jump from under a block and balance on it.

Maryo, from Secret Maryo Chronicles

Now the banks in Cyprus are meant to be open, but they have currency controls. This means that the Euro’s in Cyprus are not worth as much as the Euros in other countries at the moment.

Suppose you could make metal do anything you wanted,
use it in ways no one thought possible,
at Audi that’s what we do,
the new Audi A6 with Aluminium-hybrid body,
engineered for a lighter touch.

The way the metal forming is done in the advert is really nice, just shaping the parts by hand, just like the clay model can be formed when producing models of the car.

The technology is interesting, and challenging, a combination of aluminium and steel parts are used to make the car body. About 20% of aluminium by weight of the car body is aluminium, that means about 40% by volume. Non-load bearing parts such as body panels are aluminium (which benefit from good stiffness/weight ratio). All of the car body is made from cold formed and warm formed steels as in conventional car body. Interesting, aluminium sections seem to be present as side impact bars and bumper. From the advert you might be left with the impression that the whole body is aluminium, or that this is something that would be desirable, especially confusing since ‘hybrid’ is also now commonly used to refer to automobiles which use combinations of different power sources for the engine.

This video shows which parts of the car body are aluminium and steel.

However these cars overall are not much lighter due to the use of aluminium. From the previous model of A6 the weight saving is 30 kg, the weight if the total car is 1575 kg unladen or 2,155 kg gross weight (figures for 4 door 2.0 diesel). I want to look up the weight of Audio A6 since they are first introduced, that’s because in all cars there has been a trends towards increasing weight, despite all the advances in decreasing the weight of the car body.