The Importance of Corrosion Prevention & Reinforcing Our Nation's Infrasctructure

Not really a surprise that painters want us to know that bridges and infrastructure can corrode. It's like they might have some sort of financial interest.

I don't know that they had to go to the efforts to photoshop out the bridges in the intro, however. That's a little creepy looking.

There's a really nice animation at 1:10 showing the anode and cathodes forming on the same piece of iron, then they mostly go into showing how we can prevent (or at least minimize) corrosion via inspection and maintenance (mostly through painting - I'm sorry - through 'coating appli[cation] by certified coating application specialists on a regular maintenance schedule')

Corrosion in Motion Golden Gate Bridge

Doncha just love student project videos?

At least it looks like these kids might actually have been at the Golden Gate Bridge for some of their filming. And while their special effects aren't exactly on a professional level just yet, they gave the monster attacks, earthquakes, and explosions a good, college (or high school) try.

They do a decent job explaining why the iron oxidizes, including a pretty thorough writing of the chemical reaction of the rusting of iron. They also show a cross-section of what galvanizing layers look like and what reactions work within the galvanizing.

The video does end a bit abruptly, but it's not a bad effort. I'd be impressed if my students produced this video. Maybe this'll be something to work toward for next year.

Tempering Process

I've had a few former students sell Cutco Knives. I did end up buying a couple of knives from the first student because I had pitty on his 'cutting the rope' demonstration. In the long run, I haven't been impressed with the knives.

That all being said, I do use this video in my class to show quenching and tempering. It's a great show of those techniques.

Annealing Metal

Yeah, but how do you get the bracelet to be the right shape and size?

Do you actually wrap the cooled, annealed metal around your wrist, or is there some sort of mandrill that you use as an arm stand-in?

And how do you get the pretty, peened appearance on the surface of the bracelet?

I have so many questions - because I pretty much understand that annealing the metal makes it more workable (while admittedly, developing some pretty nasty scale).

Crystal Birth

No voice-over, no explanation, just pretty videos of reduced metal crystals growing from the application of an electric current to a metallic ion solution set to music.

But they're really pretty.

Don't Play With ACID SLIME

But why would you even...

I mean, what did you think...

It's just gonna...

smh...

These stand-in kings of random try acid slime a few different ways. They take slime (glue slime, not PVA) and dunk it in various acids (sulfuric, hydrochloric, muriatic - which is just hydrochloric, and sulfuric - yes, I wrote that twice). They mix the glue with the acid instead of water and try to make slime. And they mix baking soda into the slime before then putting that slime in the acids.

None of it comes out terribly exciting.

The slimes made with the acid don't work, though, because I assume the acids break down the polymers - since the polymers are just organic molecules to begin with.

Risk List 2015

I'll readily admit that I'm not 100% sure that I understand what rare earth elements are all about. While driving around on vacation, I listened to most of this On Point radio show about them, and I'm still a bit dodgy about which elements they are, why they're useful to us, and why the heck China apparently owns all of them.

What I do know, however, is that loads of politicians and talking heads say that rare earth elements are desperately important to loads of our defense and manufacturing sectors and that China apparently has the entire world of rare earth elements in the palm of their hand.

So says that 2015 Risk List, ranking the relative risks to our supply chains from disruptions in various element production.

What I do know is that we need to get us some of that there reform.

Source - http://www.bgs.ac.uk/downloads/start.cfm?id=3075