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By Howard Scott, Henry S. Rawdon

The method of demonstrating the structure existing in a metal or alloy at high temperatures, by etching a polished sample after it has been heated to the desired temperature, is quite familiar to metallog-raphists. The usual procedure1 2 is to heat the specimen, previously polished for microscopic examination, to the desired temperature, in a neutral atmosphere (hydrogen or nitrogen), then admit the etching gas (chlorine, hydrochloric acid or similar gas) for a few seconds, and finally, after flushing out the etching gas with the neutral one, cool the specimen in the neutral atmosphere. The pattern produced by etching at a definite temperature is usually taken as a record of the microstructure prevailing at that temperature. It has frequently been pointed out that changes in composition of the surface metal occur during the preliminary heating in the neutral atmosphere, so that the appearance produced by the etching at high temperature may not exactly represent the condition of the interior of the specimen. To overcome this uncertainty, the heating has sometimes been done in vacuo,3 the etching gas being admitted when the desired temperature was reached, then pumped out and the specimen cooled in vacuo. The studies of Rosenhain, Humfrey, and other workers 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 dem-

Jan 1, 1922

[ ] ST. JOSEPH Lead Co., is entering the oil business. Andrew Fletcher, St. Joseph president, stated that plans call for a contract with the Continental Oil Co., to drill 11 exploratory wells. Six will be in Texas, one in southern Louisiana, one in northern Louisiana, and one each in California, Oklahoma, and Montana. St. Joseph is also negotiating a contract with the Zephyr Drilling Co., for wells in Wyoming and Colorado. St. Joseph is planning to drill another well on a 6000 acre plot in southern Illinois. Proxies issued before a special meeting of the board, said the new venture is not intended to change the general character of the company's business, or to involve a significant part of its resources. If gas, oil, or minerals are discovered in paying quantities, the company will develop and operate the deposits and dispose of the products for the joint account of Continental Oil and St. Joseph Lead. The mining company will contribute a proportionate share of the cost, but will have definite limitation of its obligation. The amendment to St. Joseph's certificate of corporation, passed by the board meeting, also extended the power of the company to include mining operations of all kinds.

Jan 1, 1952

By J. C. Fisher

C. S. Smith has described a method for measuring the relative values of different solid-solid and solid-liquid interfacial tensi0ns. When a polyphase alloy is held at an elevated temperature, individual particles of each phase adjust their shapes and minimize the interfacial energy. Wherever three interfaces meet, the dihedral angles are such that the three interfacial tensions, considered as forces, are in equilibrium. When the angles between three forces in equilibrium at a point are known, it is possible to determine any two in terms of the third. In this way ratios of interfacial tensions have been .obtained. The value of a given interfacial tension ratio was found to be independent of the alloy system from which it was determined. Smith also has employed the method when one of the phases is liquid. When equilibrium is reached with respect to In the course of work on grain growth in high purity aluminum a simple optical method was developed for detecting the presence or absence of preferred orientation in annealed specimens. The specimens were prepared by grinding, polishing and "deep etching." The etching reagent used for high purity aluminum has been described.* The resulting etch pits produced selective

Jan 1, 1949

Last spring the suggestion was made that the national engineering societies offer to assist the War Department in the formation of an engineer reserve in the United States Army. The suggestion was brought to the attention of some of the officers of the Army, who commended it and confirmed the belief that the need of such a reserve was a real one; that the European war had distinctly shown that engineers in time of war are required on a scale never before realized and of great varieties of experience. In our own army no adequate provision is made for great numbers of engineers, for although the corps of engineers is composed of men of the very highest professional proficiency in certain lines it is greatly short of the numerical strength that would be immediately required. Acting on this suggestion, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute of Mining Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the American Institute of Consulting Engineers appointed committees authorized and directed to take such steps as might be advisable to urge the organization of such a reserve corps as part of the. regular army, and so assist in putting the United States in a better condition of prepared-

Jan 10, 1915

Plans have been completed with only details to be arranged for the first Metals Branch Conference in the Northwest. The two day meeting will be held jointly with the Industrial Minerals Div. on Friday and Saturday, May 9 and 10, 1952, at the Davenport Hotel in Spokane, Wash. For, some time the metals activities in this area have been neglected. Expansion of metal producing and fabricating industries in Washington and neighboring states has brought sufficient interest to insure the success of such a meeting. A committee has been hard at work for several months. Nonferrous extractive metallurgy men will find an extensive program in the April issue of JOURNAL OF METALS. Sessions for iron and steel producers, physical metallurgists, and educators will make the Metals Branch picture complete. Metals Branch members residing in Washington, British Columbia, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, and Utah, or who can be in the Northwest at this time should make plans now to attend. A Metals Branch luncheon is planned for Friday and a dinner jointly with the Industrial Minerals Div. is planned for Saturday according to F. R. Morral, metallurgist with the metallurgical research div. of Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp., P. O. Box 1451, Spokane, Wash.

Jan 1, 1952

A professional and special section of the United States Employment Service, Department of Labor, has been created for the purpose of aiding officers and men who have been discharged from military service, but who, for various reasons, cannot resume their former positions, to place themselves in industry without loss of time. Its work is carried out in conjunction with the Engineering Societies Employment Bureau. The machinery of this new professional section is being set up as rapidly as possible, and an office is already in operation at 16 East 42c1 St., New York. The work in the New York State district is under the direction of Mr. Henry Bruere, formerly City Chamberlain of New York City. Dr. Thomas T. Read, Chairman of the A. I. M. E. Committee on Industrial Organization, has charge of the clearance between the State offices of the Eastern States. This service is designed for the purpose of placing not only men in the engineering professions, but for all other kinds of professional and highly trained, skilled men. Full details regarding the qualifications desired in a man should be given, so that employers may be put in touch only with such available men as will fully qualify for the positions.

Jan 2, 1919

By W. Vickers

SALKOVITZ1 has given a number of useful angles between planes for use with the Laue method in determining the orientation of bismuth single crystals. Bismuth is usually considered as having a face-centered-rhombohedra1 structure with its axial angle 87°34', Fig. 1. A similar figure given by Sal-kovitz appears to be in error in that the angle there marked as 87°34' should be 92°26. The primitive cell is a single rhombohedron of axial angle 570 14. The structure is almost face-centered-cubic and hence high accuracy in measurements is essential if there is to be no confusion in indexing poles or zone axes. It is easier to get this accuracy if zone axes are plotted on the stereogram because they will lie near the basic circle where the net has a more open scale. The zone axes can be read from the film, using a Greninger chart, and can be plotted more accurately than poles. Also, the angles between points near the basic circle can be read more accurately than those between poles near the center. In order to use the zone axes the angles between directions have been calculated from a formula given by Niggli,2 and are given in Table I. Miller indices

Jan 1, 1958

Today there is unparalleled opportunity for constructive effort in the national mineral economy on the part of the Land-Grant colleges and universities. The matter is too important to be pushed aside. It is inevitable that in the aftermath of World War II, conscientious Americans the country over should want to take stock of national resources. Attention is now centered, as never before, on our mineral potentialities. Opportunities and responsibilities are unparalleled and a condition exists which will not occur for another generation. Mineral industries educators cannot pro- vide the answer without taking stock of its component parts, organizing, planning, and taking action in a real dynamic sense. The services encompassed by the various fields of mineral industries must be utilized to help in the solution of problems provided by the international emergency, the country's needs, the people's needs. Mineral industries colleges have a vital role in technical aid to backward countries through foreign student programs, especially in the Latin Americas.1 By helping them to help themselves develop and utilize their resources to the fullest, we will be helping ourselves. One day they may be a Godsend in a solution of the American demographic problem. They may be prepared to

Jan 1, 1950

By John V. Beall

W hen the blasts went off on West 11th St., just off 5th Ave. in New York City, James Michaels, editor of Forbes magazine, was in his office a few doors away reviewing color layouts with his production manager. Having once been a reporter, he grabbed his trench coat and dashed for the street to be con- fronted by the demolished townhouse which had been turned into a bomb factory by youths. To Michaels, this shocking episode supplied the exclamation point to thoughts he was formulating that an era had ended and a new one was beginning in the economic and social climate of the U. S. "For twenty years corporate profits, the stock market, middle income pay have gone up and up. . . The illusions of twenty years are in confrontation today with changed needs," he said. "International omnipotence is economically beyond our means, . . The anti-pollution and community renewal people are not nuts in tennis shoes who will go away. . . That corporation presidents can report an increase in earnings every year is an illusion that will be dropped. . . There has been a $200 billion shrink in value of stocks and bonds since Nixon came into office" were some indicators Michaels mentioned.

Jan 1, 1970

The following petition for amendment of the constitutional provisions relating to qualifications for membership in the Institute, signed by 75 members, of whom 27 are members of the Committee on Increase of Membership, was received by the Board of Directors, was printed on the program of the New York Meeting sent to all members early in January, and is now being voted upon by the membership: In accordance with the terms f Article X, we hereby propose the following amendment to the Constitution, Article II, Section 2: Members shall comprise all those persons who on the third Monday of February, 1918, were members of the Institute, and in addition thereto, all those thereafter, elected or transferred into the, class of Members. A person to he eligible for election or transfer into the class of Members must he at least 27 years of age and must have had at least six years' employment in the practice of engineering, mining, geology, metallurgy or chemistry, during at least three years of which he must have held positions of responsibility in one or more of these fields. Graduation from the scientific course of a college, approved by the Committee on Membership, shall be considered equivalent to two years' employment, as required in the previous sentence.

Jan 2, 1918

We wish to congratulate the authors on a fine presentation of a difficult and interesting problem. We fully support the findings that liquid or even mushy center reduction has no place in the production of quality steels. We also agree with the findings, or implications, that internal bar quality is not made in the rolling stands, but in the caster. This is the main reason why Inland caster exclusively uses the submerged casting technique after a few months of familiarization with open casting. The metallurgical advantages of combining in-line reduction with a caster are actually indirect. The use of submerged casting and refining powder permits casting of fine grained aluminum killed steels without resorting to expensive grain refiners and cuts down or eliminates reoxidation during casting. Immersion of a snorkel into a small mold may lead to several operating difficulties. Hence, the presence of in-line reduction enables the section to be cast into a large mold, at high output rates, while obtaining some product size flexibility. The capital and operating costs of a caster-- in-line mill are lower than those of the traditional installation with a separate reheating furnace and billet mill. Admittedly, in-line reduction represents an additional challenge to the steelmaker, maintenance man, and metallurgist.

Jan 1, 1972

By T. D. Tiemann

Extraction of silica from the taconites of the Wisconsin Gogebic range by high temperature digestion in caustic solutions has been described.1,2 The ores consist essentially of hematite, goethite, and microcrystalline quartz, detailed descriptions of which appear in the literature.1,3 It is the purpose of this communication to describe some results obtained from a laboratory investigation of an alternative method, that of sintering the ore with sodium carbonate followed by water extraction of the sodium silicate produced. This is analogous to the Deville-Péchiney4,5 soda ash sinter process for the production of alumina from bauxites in which soluble sodium aluminates are formed. Raw mixes of the desired composition were prepared from 10.0 g minus 200 mesh samples of taconite and sintered in nickel crucibles in a muffle furnace controlled to within ±10°F of the operating temperatures. The resulting sinters were pulverized and then leached in distilled water with continuous agitation for 30 minutes at 95°C. The suspensions were vacuum filtered and the residues dried, ignited and weighed. Iron assays on the ignited samples were made by the standard dichromate procedure after dissolution in hydrochloric acid. The percentage of extraction was calculated from the iron assays by the relation:

Jan 1, 1964

By C. R. Fast

In order to evaluate the ability of a Hydrafrac treatment to effect a sustained increase in well production, data were accumulated on the first 65 wells in 26 fields treated by Stano-lind. Since these data were obtained from such a large number of fields, it is felt that individual well or reservoir characteristics do not affect the overall picture, as might be the case if the study were made in one field or one group of wells in a field. These data are tabulated in Table I and plotted on Figs. 1 and 2. An analysis of Fig. 1 shows that at the end of six months, 75 per cent, or 45, of 60 wells on which data were available showed a sustained production increase. At the end of two years, data were available on 25 wells. Of these, 15 wells, or 60 per cent, showed a sustained production increase. At the end of three years, 55 per cent, or 10, of 18 wells had a production rate greater at that time than before Hydrafrac treatment. The lack of information on additional wells at the end of the third year is primarily a result of the small number of treatments conducted in the early stages of field application

Jan 1, 1952

By J. R. Finlay

THE other day, I fell into conversation with two gentlemen who desired to improve the condition of the people; so that the talk was semi-political. They seemed to agree that I was inclined to be "con-servative," "reactionary," perhaps an "evolutionist," looking upon "reform" with suspicion. Finally I rejoined somewhat in this manner: "You attach to me phrases that I have heard all my life but which convey no meaning to me. It is quite true that I do not make a fetish of terms like reform, liberty, democracy and so forth; neither do I worship the idea that `things are good enough as they are,' `leave well enough. alone' and so forth. There is more satisfaction in building something up than in tearing something down, or in just maintaining something that is already built. Progress is a popular word; but what is progress? In my opinion it is comprised, so far as public welfare is concerned, of two elements: Improvements in production of goods and knowledge; improvements in keeping order." This substitute for politics, economics, reform, pro-gress, conservatism, radicalism, democracy, socialism, monarchism and all the phrases of public welfare may seem over-simple; perhaps it is, but at least it defines something. It seems to me to be at least worth attention.

Jan 4, 1922

THE following employment items are made available to AIME members on a non-profit basis by the Engineering Societies Personnel Service, Inc., operating in cooperation with the Four Founder Societies. Local offices of the Personnel Service are at 8 W. 40th.St. New York 18; 100 Farnsworth Ave., Detroit; 57. Post St., San Francisco; 84 E. Randolph St., Chicago 1. Applicants should address all mail to' the proper key numbers in care of the New York office and include 6c in stamps for forwarding and. returning application. The applicant agrees, if placed in a position by means of the Service, to pay the placement fee listed by the Service. AIME members may secure a weekly bulletin of positions available for $3.50 a quarter, $12 a year. MEN AVAILABLE Mining Engineer, 41, married, one child, employed. Broad experience, both underground and open-pit, type mining. Exploration, development, exploitation, industrial construction, milling in northwestern United States. Desires position with progressive, established concern. M-666-259¬Chicago. Recent Graduate, 24, married, no children, B.S. mineral economics. Employed-one year's experience in development of deposits, study of problem areas. Will accept position anywhere in the world. Available immediately. M-667.

Jan 1, 1952

By Edward D. Thimons, Richard J. Kline

Converting the energy of falling water into useful work is a well developed engineering concept. Much of the electric power consumed in the United States is generated in this manner. It is easy to conceive that the water which flows down long vertical pipelines into deep nines could be utilized in a similar manner by allowing it to operate a turbine at the bottom of the pipelines. The mines in the United States are continually descending to greater depths in search of mineable deposits. Large quantities of water are carried down long vertical pipelines in order to be used for dust suppression, motor cooling, and refrigeration. Pumping the used water back to the surface is also required. The electrical costs associated with mining are also constantly escalating due to both increased demand and rising kilowatt hour costs. To help deal with this problem, the United States Bureau of Mines (USBM) has awarded a contract to Foster-Miller, Inc. of Waltham, MA, to investigate, evaluate, and demonstrate commercially available means of energy recovery for the deep mining industry. In other words, it demonstrates an efficient system for converting the energy of water flowing down vertical pipelines into useful mechanical or electrical energy.

Jan 1, 1982

I. C. WHITE, Morgantown, W. Va. (written discussion *).-The writer's conclusions with reference to the possibility of finding commercial deposits of petroleum in Brazil were published in 1908 in the Final Report of the Coal Commission of Brazil.1 Since this volume is not generally accessible, and the author has nothing to acid thereto, the following quotation found on pages 243-7 may prove of interest: The Possibility of Petroleum Deposits in Brazil "The writer has often been asked to express an opinion as to the possibility of finding petroleum in commercial quantity in Brazil. "The question is one that does not admit of an adequate answer except for the regions visited by the writer, which as already stated, include only, a portion of that great territory, and only the southern portion of Brazil; namely, the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catharina, Paraná, and a few rapid excursions across São Paulo, and Minas Geraes, as well as the brief visit to Marahú in Bahia. "That the sedimentary beds of the Brazilian Permian once held some petroleum is attested by the evidence of the Iraty black shale which gives off the characteristic odor of this substance from São Paulo to Rio Grande do Sul.

Jan 1, 1918

By Atmaram H. Soni

A statistical study of machinability led the writer to examine existing data in regard to a thermal conductivity-mechanical properties relationship. Various functional relationships were proposed and the multiple correlation determined by statistical methods discussed in detail in the 1iterature.4 The relationship having the greatest engineering and statistical significance is discussed below. The data for cast and wrought aluminum alloys''2 have been compiled and analyzed separately. The results of these analyses are presented in Table I. The empirical equations for estimating the thermal conductivity (cal sec-' cm-I °C) are: for cast aluminum alloys K = 0.584 -0.00984/ -0.00263 Hb [1] and for wrought aluminum alloys K = 0.604 -0.00424l- 0.00170 Hb [2] where 1 and Hb are the percentage elongation and Brinell hardness number. Results of a similar analysis pertaining to stainless steel3 are also given in Table I. This empirical equation for estimating thermal conductivity (Btu per sq ft per hr per °F per in.) is K = 216.19- 1.716l - 0.0997 Hb [3] The relationship between electrical resistivity and mechanical properties was also examined for aluminum alloys using the same statistical method. These results are listed in Table II. While the situation of exact multiple correlation

Jan 1, 1965

By E. T. Cox

WHILe engaged, in the year 1856, in determining the oil-bearing properties of some bituminous coals from Western Kentucky, by subjecting them to dry distillation in an iron retort, which held about a pint;, and to the neck of which were attached several bottles, for collecting the carbon oils, and washing and measuring the gas, I observed that there was a very great gain in the weight of coke thus made, over that obtained from the same coal when charred in a platinum crucible, as is usual in the laboratory for making the proximate analysis of coal. It was thought at the time that the increase of coke, by the former mode of treating the coal, was due to the pressure which the retarded gas exerted upon the solid carbon, and the possible fixing of a portion of the carbon from the volatile hydrocarbons. For the purpose of obtaining a more definite idea of the effects of pressure on the coking of coals, a series of experiments were made this spring under my direction, by my assistant, Dr. G. M. Levete. The results are highly instructive and full of interest, since they point out some peculiarities in the nature of bituminous coals which

By E. T. Cox

WHILE engaged, in the year 1856, in determining the oil-bearing properties of some bituminous coals from Western Kentucky, by subjecting them to dry distillation in an iron retort, which held about a pint, and to the neck of which were attached several bottles, for collecting the carbon oils, and washing and measuring the gas, I observed .that there was a very great gain in the weight of coke thus made, over that obtained from the same coal when charred in a platinum crucible, as is usual in the laboratory for making the proximate analysis of coal. It was thought at the time that the increase of coke, by the former mode of treating the coal, was due to the pressure which the retarded gas exerted upon the solid carbon, and the possible fixing of a portion of the carbon from the volatile hydrocarbons. For the purpose of obtaining a more definite idea of the effects of pressure on the coking of coals, a series of experiments were made this spring under my direction, by my assistant, Dr. G. M. Levete. The results are highly instructive and full of interest, since they point out some peculiarities in the nature of bituminous coals which

Jan 1, 1875