Ellen Hederick
January 10, 2018
Matter Blog
Alloys
What are alloys? Alloys are a metal made by two or more metallic elements, especially to give greater strength or resistance to corrosion, so alloys or mixing different metals help by making them harder and more durable. They are also stronger can be more helpful when making complex machines, therefore they can be a better alternative than a single metal such as copper or aluminum. A lot of times people classify an alloy as a “mixture of metals” but sometimes that can be deceiving or even misleading occasionally because some alloys only contain only one metal and it is mixed with other substances that are non metals. One example of this is cast iron, this is a alloy it is made of iron and nonmetal, carbon. One of the better ways to classify an alloy is a material that is made up of at least two different types of chemical elements (one being a metal). “The most important metallic component of an alloy (often representing 90 percent or more of the material) is called the main metal, the parent metal, or the base metal”. Although an alloy can occasionally be a compound it is usually a solid solution. A lot of our everyday objects are alloys for example “Gold in jewelry is almost always an alloy as 100% gold is really really soft (but by adding lots of copper/silver other metals you can get something that still has the good qualities of good but less of the bad ones)”. You can also find alloys in things like door locks, fillings, coins, guns, musical instruments and nuclear reactors Traditionally alloys have always been made by melting and heating components to make different liquid forms, which then can be mixed together and cooled into a solid solution, known as an alloy. But alloys can also be made a different but semi similar way, by turning components into powders, mixing them together and the finally fusing them. This process can occur because of the high pressure and high temperature which allows for the powders to combine and fuse together. A third and final way to make an alloy is by ion implantation, whereas ions are fired into the surface layer of a piece of metal. “Eagle Alloys has been in the business of cutting, shaping and distributing essential materials to industrial companies such that sophisticated alloys can be utilized in hundreds of different, important applications”. When an alloy consists of two components, it's called a binary alloy. On the other hand a alloy with three different components is a ternary alloy, and lastly an alloy with four different components is called a Quaternary alloy. All of these are different forms of alloys with different components. A homogeneous alloy is a mixture that only consists of one phase and a mixture alloy is a combination of several phases.
Alloys are very important to our everyday lives, if we did not have access to them or did not know how to create them some of our everyday's products would either not exist or not be as efficient as they are today. An example of some of these products are jewelry, fillings and coins. These everyday items might seem small and irreverent sometimes but they are not and with alloys they would not be as strong or they might not even exist. Therefore we need alloys and they are very important. Although alloys are very important they will also continue to develop over time. Alloys will continue to get more technical and useful as time goes by and technology in science continues to grow and advance. Alloys are already extremely influential to us and as time goes on and more studies are conducted and theories are found alloys will become even stronger and more useful than they already are in today's world.
Comments
Post a Comment