WOULD ACHIEVEMENT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 47, 24 January 1939, Page 9

WOULD ACHIEVEMENT

ALLOW FOR ALL. Most of us are blissfully ignorant of our dependence to-day upon alloys. Rarely, if ever, do wc pause to think that they are for ever shaping our daily lives, yet this is the truth. To begin with, there are about 7000 of them, each with its own name and its own special properties. There are the light alloys, like manesiuin, which is largely used in building aircraft; and there are the heavy alloys.

One of the most useful and wonderful of all is aluminium. It is scarcely 50 years since aluminium was a new substance to tho engineer and scientist—a 'very light metal, but no more. To-day it is used in endless ways. An alloy of aluminium and copper and zinc provides us with a metal capable of bearing ten times the strain of pure aluminium. Aluminium and steel produce a steel which will not rust —one of the greatest discoveries of modern times, and a revolutionary alloy for which the world has now almost unlimited uses. Aluminium alloyed with copper gives us a metal which will not rust in water. Aluminium used as a coating for the back of a mirror gives altogether different reflecting properties, and we may be sure that something of this sort is destined to play an important part in television. A new idea is to mix powdered metals together, the resulting alloy almost always having remarkable properties. Thus, by mixing tungsten, copper, and nickel, a new alloy heavier than lead is made, and this is of great use in connection with X-ray apparatus, having an exceptional resistance to the rays.—(L).