Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Allotropes of Iron (a phase diagram)


One of our campers, Michael Martin, in Salt Lake City was searching for a phase diagram for iron while my co-master teacher explained the glory that is the iron wire demonstration. See, phase diagrams are comfortable and familiar for we few, we happy few, we chemistry teachers. 

Luckily, he found a really nice one showing the various allotropes of iron at different temperatures (and at really low pressures.)

Not everybody else looks at a phase diagram as familiar, comfortable territory, but we do, and sometimes it helps to put new information (the crystal changes for iron at increasing temperature) in a familiar form.

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