Posterminaries
- PDF / 16,614 Bytes
- 1 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 7 Downloads / 138 Views
Corrections (The Wright Stuff) Consistently with an established pattern, POSTERMINARIES in the January 2000 issue of MRS Bulletin, “Materials by Accident,” drew a small flood of responses. Among these, John Cahn (National Institute of Standards and Technology) pointed out a number of factual errors among the ramblings that the editors had allowed me to publish. I referred to strain aging, when I clearly meant age hardening, and I attributed the discovery of the phenomenon to experimental work of Wilm on Al-Cu in 1908. The purported accident was actually perpetrated on an alloy of Al-Cu-Mn with 0.5% Mg heat treated at 520°C. The story of Al-Cu alloys is even
more interesting, as pointed out by Martha Goodway (Smithsonian Institute): The Wright brothers specified an Al-Cu alloy for the crankcase of the engine for their famous Flyer, in 1903, though it is more likely that the alloy composition was chosen to facilitate casting than to provide strengthening. See Gayle and Goodway in Science 266 (1994) p. 1015 for more details about this and for their recent discovery that the founders for the Wright brothers had, without anybody knowing it for 90 years, achieved precipitation hardening of Al-Cu. Cahn also pointed out that the discovery of quasicrystals was made during experiments on
extending the solubility of manganese in aluminum, not attempts to form metallic glasses as I had asserted. Finally, Martha Goodway asked for the citation to the quotation “. . . fortune favors a prepared mind” that I attributed to Pierre Curie. On checking, I find that Curie himself was only quoting Louis Pasteur, who made the original remark in an inaugural speech at the University of Lille on December 7, 1854. I stand corrected. And I continue to look forward to comments on this column. Never before have I been so sure that my work was being read by so many. ALEX KING
Materials Science and/or Engineering a single choice by answering precisely or choosing the answer that seems MOST correct to you. Then refer to the key for your own personal rating.
10. (A) 1 (B) -1 9. (A) 1 (B) -1 8. (A) 3 (B) -3 (C) 2 (D) 0 (E) 1 (F) -1 (G) -2 (H) -4 7. (A) 1 (B) -1
two things which I still see as distinct and separate. You probably think of yourself as a “materials scientist” or a “materials engineer” but probably not both. Some of you may describe yourselves as “materials researchers” in the spirit of the Materials Research Society, but I am willing to bet that you still think that you are either engineers or scientists. It is largely a matter of self-definition, of course, and your colleagues might define you as either an engineer or a scientist depending not upon any absolute definition, but on your position on the spectrum relative to theirs. If you are on THAT side of me, you must be an engineer; on the OTHER side you are a scientist. This whole business is just a matter of identifying your spot on the broad spectrum of materials science & engineering. Pure scientists are at one end, pure engineers at the other, so how do you find your place? H
Data Loading...
