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POSITIONS VACANT (Under this heading will he published notes sent to the Secretary of the Institute by members or other persons.) Mine and mill accountant for Mexico. Knowledge of Spanish desirable. Salary $150 to $200 gold per month with living quarters. No. 60. Master mechanic familiar with mine and cyanide plant machinery for Mexico, $200 gold per month and living quarters. No. 61. Electro-metallurgist for production of ferro-alloys, salary $200 to $400 depending on experience. No. 62. Man familiar with ferro-tungsten products of electric furnaces to draw up specifications for machine tools, to watch these tools in service and revise specifications accordingly. Salary $150 to $200 per month. No. 63. Man to take entire charge of the sales of a steel company making electric alloy steels in the shape of ingots, billets and bars. To the right man an opportunity will be offered for taking a leading position in the management of the company and of participating in its results. No. 68. Chemist wanted by Electric Steel concern in the East. Must be fully acquainted with alloy steel analysis. Send full particulars and references. No. 73.

Jan 3, 1916

By C. D. Wiseman

THE concept of alloying to increase the strength of metals originated during the bronze age. However, at the present time there is no single theory capable of explaining all of the observed strengthening effects of alloying elements on the mechanical properties. In general, it may be said that solid solutions are stronger than the pure metal and that the strengthening effect increases with increasing alloy content. Various theories for solution hardening have been proposed, the first of which was presented by Rosenhain who suggested that the alloying elements roughened the slip planes, thereby requiring a higher stress to initiate slip. Recent work by French and Hibbard2 confirmed Norbury's3 conclusion that those alloying elements which cause a greater change in lattice parameter have larger effects on hardness. However, a given change in lattice parameter produced by different alloying elements does not cause the same change in hardness. A further refinement was suggested by Dorn, Pietrokowski, and Tietz4 who considered differences in valence between the solute and solvent with the change in lattice parameter to explain the plastic properties of aluminum alloys. Allen, Schofield, and Tate5 further investigated the valency contribution to solution strengthening by testing some copper-base solid-solution alloys having constant electron densities. Tensile tests performed on these alloys gave identical stress-strain curves even though the atomic size effect, which varied by a factor of two, was neglected. The advent of dislocation theory6-8 provided a new and powerful tool capable of explaining many phenomena of plastic deformation and indicated new approaches to solution hardening. The basic con- cept of recent theories is that solution hardening is not due to stresses associated with randomly dispersed solute atoms, but rather to a nonuniform distribution of the solute. This conclusion was reached by consideration of the effective tension present on each dislocation line and the ability of a dislocation to pass an obstacle. cottrell suggested the possibility that the internal stresses due to randomly distributed solute atoms would offer essentially no resistance to the passage of dislocations. He reasoned that an edge dislocation may be considered as a rigid line discontinuity. As the dislocation moved through a crystal, the random stress fields would be equally distributed along its length. Since half of the stress fields would be acting to move the dislocation forward and the other half trying to move it back, the net effect on the dislocation would be zero. Thus the randomly distributed solute atoms would not contribute appreciably to solution strengthening. Mott and Nabarro10 considered the dislocation as a flexible, rather than a rigid, discontinuity. They obtained a simple model for a dislocation moving in a lattice having precipated particles, where the dislocation would actually bend around the obstacle until it would loop back onto itself to rejoin and then continue onward. Their work indicated that the minimum radius of curvature of the dislocation line, under the action of an external stress and in the region of an internal stress, would be such that the dislocation would be unable to pass through a matrix containing small closely spaced precipates by the looping process. The dislocations would tend to remain rather straight, approaching the condition of Cottrell's rigid dislocation. Hence, the strengthening must not be due to random solute atoms; however, it might be due to the concentration of atoms, either as clusters of like atoms or as short-range ordered regions, or to the concentration of solute atoms around dislocations. To date, four mechanisms of solution strength-

Jan 1, 1959

By D. W. Smith, Robert F. Mehl

It has been shown by numerous studies that the orientations of new metal crystals are determined by the orientations of the crystals in the original matrix, whether these new crystals are formed by recrystalliza-tion, by precipitation from solid solutions, or by transitions in the solid state. The orientations of crystals formed by recrystallization of cold-worked metals that bear preferred orientations are occasionally simply related to the initial preferred orientation; often, however, the relationship is not simple, but complicated and obscure in origin.1 The orientations of crystals formed by precipitation from solid solutions have been shown by many studies in this and other countries to be determined by the orientation of the crystals of the solid solution stable at the higher temperatures, though here again complicated cases have been found and no general theory is available.2 Related to this latter class are the relationships found in crystals formed by suppressed transforma-

Jan 1, 1935

By D. W. Smith, Robert F. Mehl

It has been shown by numerous studies that the orientations of new metal crystals are determined by the orientations of the crystals in the original matrix, whether these new crystals are formed by recrystalliza-tion, by precipitation from solid solutions, or by transitions in the solid state. The orientations of crystals formed by recrystallization of cold-worked metals that bear preferred orientations are occasionally simply related to the initial preferred orientation; often, however, the relationship is not simple, but complicated and obscure in origin.1 The orientations of crystals formed by precipitation from solid solutions have been shown by many studies in this and other countries to be determined by the orientation of the crystals of the solid solution stable at the higher temperatures, though here again complicated cases have been found and no general theory is available.2 Related to this latter class are the relationships found in crystals formed by suppressed transforma-

Jan 1, 1935

By Arthur L. Walker

In June, 1893, while I was with the Old Dominion Copper Co. at Globe, Ariz., I received an offer to take charge, as manager, of the Baltimore Electric? Refining Co. which had recently built a plant at Baltimore, Md., having a capacity of about 1200 tons of electrolytic copper per month, using the Hayden series system. This was a very large output, for in those days the plants were small and the art was in its infancy. At the beginning of 1893 there were 11 electrolytic refineries in the United States, most of them using the multiple system. The Hayden series system was used at Baltimore and Bridgeport and the Smith series system was in operation at the Electrolytic Copper Co. at Ansonia, COM., and at the Pennsylvania Salt Co. at Philadelphia. In the latter system the plates were placed in a horizontal position, but the operating difficulties were so numerous it was soon discarded. The total production of these 11 plants in 1892 was very small; I have not been able to discover reliable figures of production. There were about thirty electrolytic copper refineries in the world that year, according to Titus Ulke, and the entire production of these

Jan 1, 1932

By Walter E. Lewis

Myriad problems face all of us in the next decade. Vietnam, poverty, and pollution are perhaps the most pres- sing. A lesser one but still vital to us as a Nation is the slow hut apparently relentless extinction of the mining, metallurgical. geological and petroleum engineer. Are we doomed to take our place in the crossword puzzle with the moa. to be defined like it as an "extinct bird"? Or can we reverse the trend perhaps, in the next decade? The plain fact is we are an endangered species, and must resign ourselves to virtual extinction in the 1970's unless the trend is reversed. Probably, many of us have felt the problem will solve itself if left in the in-basket long enough, believing, that the trend will reverse solely on the basis of demand for these disciplines. This approach has not worked up to now, it gives no promise of working in the future, and furthermore, the problem has been in the in-basket much too long. The point is simply this: What can each of us do as an individual, or as part of a company, a State agency, a Federal agency, a university, or an organization such as AIME?

Jan 1, 1970

By M. E. Nicholson

IN order to understand how alloying elements influence hardenability through their effect on the rate of pearlite nucleation, it is advantageous to use a model to describe the mechanism of pearlite nucleation. The model which currently is most widely accepted has been described, among others, by Mehl et a1.1-3 and by Hultgren.4 Pearlite nucleation involves both the nucleation of ferrite and cementite.4,5 Cementite nucleates first, followed rapidly by the formation of ferrite at the cementite-austenite interface. The conclusion that cementite is the first phase to form during the process of pearlite nucleation is based, in part, on the observation that proeutectoid cementite is continuous with pearlitic cementite and that the orientation relationship between proeutectoid ferrite and austenite is not the same as that between pearlitic: ferrite and austenite.6,7 Recently, Smith" has suggested that the dissimilarity in orientation relations, instead of indicating the pearlite nucleation sequence, may be evidence that pearlite is nucleated in a grain adjacent to the one in which it is growing. Also, Modin9 as shown that ferrite in pearlite may be continuous with proeutectoid ferrite, and he has also shown that proeutectoid cementite is not always continuous with pearlitic cementite. Thus, it appears that the conclusion that cementite always initiates the pearlite nucleation process is open to serious question. The author believes that important evidence on the question of how pearlite is nucleated exists in the rates of pearlite nucleation of different steels. The following is a review and analysis of this evidence. If the nucleation of pearlite is considered as requiring the nucleation of both cementite and ferrite, then the time to nucleate pearlite consists of the time to nucleate the first phase to form, plus the time to nucleate the second phase at the advancing interface of the first. In the absence of a visible proeutectoid constituent, the second phase must be nucleated very soon after the first. If cementite is the first phase to form, the time to nucleate pearlite will be approximately equal to the time to nucleate cementite. Since the nucleation rate of a phase precipitating from solid solution increases with the degree of supersaturation, it would be expected that the rate of pearlite nucleation should increase with increasing carbon content. Digges10 has shown that the reverse is true. He determined the quenching velocity necessary to suppress pearlite formation in plain carbon steels as a function of carbon content. His results showed that pearlite formation could be suppressed with lower quenching velocities as the carbon content of the steel increased, at least up to 1.25 pct C, the highest carbon content he studied. Thus, it would appear that in plain carbon steels, in which pearlite is formed at the nose of the C-curve, the hypothesis that cementite nucleates first does not predict the observed change in nucleation rate. The validity of the current model of pearlite nucleation may be tested also by determining whether or not it predicts the relative influence of alloying elements on the nucleation of ferrite and pearlite. This can be done best by a consideration of the changes in a TTT diagram produced by a change in alloy content. Hultgren4 suggests that the general shape of a TTT diagram, as well as what constituents will form from austenite, can be predicted from the relative nucleation rates of ferrite and cementite. This is illustrated in the schematic diagram for a hypoeutectoid low alloy or plain carbon steel shown in Fig. 1. The C-curves for ferrite nucleation and for cementite nucleation are represented by AA' and CC', respectively, and the start of ferrite formation and pearlite formation are represented by AX and BC respectively. Adopting the current theory, Hultgren suggests that between X and C pearlite forms directly from austenite, since cementite nucleates more rapidly than ferrite in this temperature range. Conversely, at temperatures above Tx, ferrite is the first to nucleate and proeutectoid ferrite is formed. As proeutectoid ferrite grows, austenite becomes enriched in carbon, so that the cementite nucleation rate is increased. As a result, pearlite nucleation above temperature Tx is accelerated, beginning along BX and not along C'X. Temperature T, represents the temperature at which the nucleation rate of ferrite equals that of cementite. By extending this type of reasoning, using the principle that the nucleation rates of ferrite and cementite increase with increasing supersaturation of austenite with respect to these phases, it should be possible to predict the influence of carbon content on the shape of the isothermal transformation diagram. For a slightly higher carbon content than that of Fig. 1, the curve A A' representing the beginning of ferrite formation should be moved to the right, whereas the curve CC' representing the beginning of cementite formation should be moved to the left. For hypoeutectoid plain carbon and low alloy steels, this prediction does not agree with existing data. Instead, as the carbon content is increased, the pearlite curve moves to the right along with the ferrite curve and always appears to join it tangen-tially. This behavior is demonstrated by the TTT-curves of a series of manganese steels" shown in Fig. 2. In this figure, TTT-curves for four alloys containing 0.20, 0.40, 0.60, and 1.20 pct C are superimposed. The curves are identified in the figure legend. The letters F, P, and C are used to indicate the start of ferrite, pearlite, and cementite formation, respectively. In these steels, it appears that the nucleation of ferrite and of pearlite are related processes. As a result of the foregoing evidence, it is proposed that the formation of pearlite be considered as follows: Either ferrite or cementite may nucleate from austenite, then grow until the remaining phase is nucleated at the interface between the growing phase and austenite. (The growth of the first phase to form is assumed to be accompanied by a composition change in the adjoining austenite.) According to this model there are two modes of nucleating pearlite: 1—where cementite initiates the succession

Jan 1, 1955

By C. B. Clark, W. H. Bruckner

Since the end of World War II interest has been increasing in the use of shaped charges in the mining industry and in other industries using explosives for blasting purposes. Shaped charges employ the principle known as the "Munroe effect," which was discovered by Charles E. Mun-roe more than 50 years ago (in 1888). Details of their design have been explained elsewhere.1,2,3 Fig I shows the essential features of design of two types of shaped charges (with conical and hemispherical cavities) and a schematic sketch of their action upon detonation. The following discussion deals with the behavior of the metal in the cavity liners when they are subjected to intense Pressures exerted when the explosive charge is detonated. Among the conclusions reached in research On shaped explosive charges, the following have been established concerning cavity liners:1'2 I. The optimum wall thickness of a conical cavity liner is dependent upon the apex angle of the 'One as well as On the base diameter of the charge. Acute apex angles require thinner walls for optimum perfmnance and more obtuse angles require thicker walls for the same base diameter' 2. Cones were more effective in forming a penetrating jet when the walls were tapered; that is, the thickness of the wall of the cone increased from the apex down. 3. The physical and mechanical properties of metals have a marked effect upon their performance as cavity-liner material. Boiling point, ductility, malleability, tensile strength, and hardness are among the properties that influence the effectiveness of a metal used as a cavity liner. Lead, for example, makes a wide, flat crater in steel plates. Aluminum makes a deeper crater than lead, and an aluminum alloy having a high tensile strength makes a deeper hole, but slightly smaller in diameter. Cast iron makes a deep, narrow hole. These findings, together with the following analysis under Metallographic Survey of slug, offer solutions to many of the problems involved in solving the mechanism of the formation of Munroe jets. It has been fairly well established that cavity liners collapse in a manner similar to that indicated in Fig 2, Conical liners are known to collapse upon themselves while hemispherical liners are believed to turn inside out in the process of jet formation. The first has been definitely proved by recovery of collapsed portions of cones, while liners from partly detonated charges show that hemispheres may turn inside out. Fig 3 shows a sketch of a recovered slug from a 6-in. shaped charge using a 45° cone made of cast iron. (This size of charge drilled holes up to 3 ft in depth in solid granodiorite.)

Jan 1, 1949

By C. B. Clark, W. H. Bruckner

Since the end of World War II interest has been increasing in the use of shaped charges in the mining industry and in other industries using explosives for blasting purposes. Shaped charges employ the principle known as the "Munroe effect," which was discovered by Charles E. Mun-roe more than 50 years ago (in 1888). Details of their design have been explained elsewhere.1,2,3 Fig I shows the essential features of design of two types of shaped charges (with conical and hemispherical cavities) and a schematic sketch of their action upon detonation. The following discussion deals with the behavior of the metal in the cavity liners when they are subjected to intense Pressures exerted when the explosive charge is detonated. Among the conclusions reached in research On shaped explosive charges, the following have been established concerning cavity liners:1'2 I. The optimum wall thickness of a conical cavity liner is dependent upon the apex angle of the 'One as well as On the base diameter of the charge. Acute apex angles require thinner walls for optimum perfmnance and more obtuse angles require thicker walls for the same base diameter' 2. Cones were more effective in forming a penetrating jet when the walls were tapered; that is, the thickness of the wall of the cone increased from the apex down. 3. The physical and mechanical properties of metals have a marked effect upon their performance as cavity-liner material. Boiling point, ductility, malleability, tensile strength, and hardness are among the properties that influence the effectiveness of a metal used as a cavity liner. Lead, for example, makes a wide, flat crater in steel plates. Aluminum makes a deeper crater than lead, and an aluminum alloy having a high tensile strength makes a deeper hole, but slightly smaller in diameter. Cast iron makes a deep, narrow hole. These findings, together with the following analysis under Metallographic Survey of slug, offer solutions to many of the problems involved in solving the mechanism of the formation of Munroe jets. It has been fairly well established that cavity liners collapse in a manner similar to that indicated in Fig 2, Conical liners are known to collapse upon themselves while hemispherical liners are believed to turn inside out in the process of jet formation. The first has been definitely proved by recovery of collapsed portions of cones, while liners from partly detonated charges show that hemispheres may turn inside out. Fig 3 shows a sketch of a recovered slug from a 6-in. shaped charge using a 45° cone made of cast iron. (This size of charge drilled holes up to 3 ft in depth in solid granodiorite.)

Jan 1, 1949

By John J. Collins

The plight of the Japanese mining business is pitiful. Coal mines were given the highest priority for all materials they needed, yet between the end of the war and June 1948, the government was obliged to subsidize them to the extent of 22 billion yen, this being the difference between the consumer's price and the producer's price. Most of the metal mining companies have been operating at only one fifth to one third of war-time production rates, and financial losses have been terrific. The chief difficulties have been a plethora of office workers and a dearth of equipment, supplies, and miners. The principal material needs at metal mines are steel rails. cars, plates, nails, rubber hoses, and belting, to say nothing of modern core drills which are totally lacking. Until recently the great shortage was in coal; for lack of fuel the smelters and factories failed to produce the very metals and equipment now needed to operate the mines. Nation-wide shortages have created a monstrous inflation of prices throughout all the economy, currently amounting to 200 times the prewar figures. For example, the price of copper ranged from 500 to 900 yen per metric ton for many years until 1937, but in mid-1948 producers were

Jan 1, 1949

By Persifor Frazer

CONTENTS. PAGE 1. Committee House of Commons Report (1843).......521 2. Clark (1880).............521 3. Schröder and Schertel (1884).... . 521 4. Committee House of Lords Report (1887).......523 5. Vita (1890).............524 6. Irvine (1890-1)............524 i. Cramer (1891)............525 8. Bailey. Cohen. Tatham and Hartog (1891))......525 9. Morrison (1891)............525 10. Brunner (1891)............525 11. Bell (1892).............585 12. Oades (1892).............526 12a. Purcell (1892)............526 13. Sennett (1892)............526 14. Bulier (1892).............526 1.7. Wiesner (1892))...........526 16. Thomson (1892)............530 17. Fletcher (1892)............530 18. Committee Engineers' Club Report (1892).......530 19. Cohen and Hefford (1892)..........531 20. Discussion Soc. Chem. Ind. (1893). ..532 21. Reuss (1893).............532 22. Thomson (1894—5) ...........535 23. Clowes and Feilmann (1895). ...536 24. Callan (1895)...........536 2.5. Wright (1895)............536 25A. Mabery (1895)............536 26. Re- (1896). ..........536 27. Herman (1896)............ 537 28. Cohen and Russell (1896).......... 537 29. Dennstedt and A hrens (1896). ..537 30. Cohen (1897). ...........537 31. Drehschmidt (1897)........... 538 32. Pfeiffer (1898). .........538 33. Fritzche (1898)............ 540 34. Ost and Wehmer (1899)........... 540 35. Donkin (1899). .........541 36. Beilby (1899)............. 643 37. Berthelot (1900)............ 544

Jan 1, 1908

By J. L. CAHUTHERS

MANY different methods are used for transporting coal from the working face to the tipple. The common methods are animal haulage, locomotive haulage, conveyor systems, and combinations of these three, supplemented, at times, by the miner pushing his own car. Haulage may also be classified into gathering and main line. Gathering haulage is the collecting of loaded cars to a point whence they are hauled to the tipple. In this there is perhaps more lost-time than on the main line because there are .more units in the operation to be synchronized. Also, conditions on the gathering haul- age, such as bad track, poor timbering, insufficient motive power, etc., cause delays; usually these are corrected on the main-line haulage.

Jan 1, 1931

By T. A. Rickard

Do not write until you have something to say. Think first; then write. In order to be understood, you must know what you wish to say. Clear writing is the consequence of clear thinking. Therefore consider your subject well before you begin to write; ruminate on it; marshal the salient facts in your mind; saturate yourself with the ideas you wish to express and with cognate ideas; then express yourself deliberately. If you are bubbling over with your subject the words will come, but you might as well expect to sail without a breeze as hope to give life to words without the living thought. Here I may advert to the fact that among the uneducated it is a common expectation to acquire the knack of writing without taking the trouble to study the art of literature. I overheard a woman in a suburban train remark to her neighbor: "I'd like to be able to write well without stopping to think about it". She was one of many that would like to do a thing well without the trouble of thinking; but it cannot be done in respect of anything to which thought is essential. The possession of a good voice does not justify a person in expecting to sing successfully to a large audience; before singing in public one has to master the technique of singing; one has to learn first how to breathe properly, how to enunciate, and many other things. The successful singer is an artist, not a megaphone. Most of us would regard a man or a woman without any training in the art of singing as a fool or an impostor if he or she were to give a public concert, yet we do not recognize the equal foolishness and imposture of persons that write books before they have studied the technique of writing. That is why so many books are unreadable, and why many books by clever men are difficult to read. They start to write books before

Jan 1, 1931

Rougher Cells The photo shows one of three carloads of new Denver Equipment Co. rougher flotation machines destined for a single customer. [ ] Low level froth overflow on both sides, and double impeller mechanisms in an open-flow type tank, were designed to enable control of variable conditions in the rougher circuit for better metallurgy. Intense agitation and aeration are claimed, for effective recovery of low-grade mineral particles. Standard parts are used, interchangeable with regular Denver Sub-A units. The Super Rougher is now in production and a 2-cell No. 24 machine will be displayed at the Mining Show. Circle No. 1 Fans A line of industrial fans built for air or materials handling is available in eleven sizes from 670 to 44,000 cfm capacity from Westinghouse Electric Corp. The air hand¬ling wheel has backwardly-inclined blades. Circle No. 2 Trolleyphones The Femco Trolleyphone, plug-in model, 2550 series, is offered as a simple mine or mill communications system by Farmers Engineering & Mfg. Co. More compact, easier to install and service, the new model is powered from existing trolley wire or power line. Circle No. 3

Jan 1, 1952

By Emil-Paul Lorenz

Considered as a whole, the mineral resources of the Turkish Republic (Anatolia) are in their untapped virgin state, and the little development shown is not the result of modern systematic geologic exploration but the continuation of the ancient open-pit mining methods of the Orient. When I came to Turkey in 1924, I found myself confronted by a formidable task because of the lack of preliminary geologic mapping. Today this condition has not essentially changed; less than one per cent of the country is covered by topographic mapping adequate for modern requirements. However, I was able to bring a semblance of order in a presentation of the mineral deposits of this country, by tracing the story of the mineral deposits that showed surface evidence of their existence. At present only the easily discovered mineral deposits of coal, copper, and lead-silver ores are being exploited. In the case of coal, of 3,000,000,000 metric tons available, only 100,000,000 have been mined. The same is also true for copper, lead-silver, and other ores, as shown in Table 1.

Jan 1, 1948

By AIME AIME

THREE of the addresses presented at this interesting and important session are printed in full else- where in this issue. The fourth, Mr. Hewett's paper, on "Cycles In Metal Production" has been issued as Technical Publication 183, and an abstract of it was published on page 162 of last month's issue. The general discussion that followed these four important papers is given in full below. S. A. TAYLOR: I would like to ask Mr. Veasey whether the control of oil in pools includes royalties, and, if so, in case of a new pool how are you going to control, or rather how are you going to describe the limits of that pool?

Jan 1, 1929

By George B. Clark, John W. Brown, Hemendra N. Kalia, Ronald R. Rollins

A new theory for three dimensional collapse of conical liners shows why the two dimensional theory may offer a good approximation. Shaped charge design parameters and rock target properties were investigated to determine their effects on penetration and breakage. Penetration in dolomite is somewhat similar to that in steel, but copper does not have markedly better penetration capabilities than brass. Several metals, liner thicknesses, cone angles and standoff ranges for each were investigated. Effective standoff is greater for aluminum than more dense metals. Optimum geometry appears to approximate that for metal targets. Resistance to penetrations was greatest for a red granite and dense siliceous rocks, and least for dolomite and porous sandstone. Hardness and compressive strength appear to be two important conventional proper- ties. The first order law does not apply to the rocks tested. Dolomite may be drilled with shaped charges, the holes sprung and round blasted successfully.

Jan 1, 1971

By J. Gurland

A method of measuring the degree of contact between grains of 1 phase in multiphase alloys is derived. It is shown that the number and the areas of contacts between grains can be determined by metallographic analysis. Relations between the area of contact, the dihedral angle, and the mean free path of spherical grains are developed. It is often desirable to interpret the mechanical behavior of alloys in terms of structural features observed under the microscope. A quantitative description of microstructures of multi-phase alloys requires consideration of geometrical and topological factors such as the amount, size, and shape of grains and the continuity of the constituent phases. The number and dimensions of grains may be metallographically determined by applying the methods described by Smith and Guttman1 and by Fullman2 in their papers on the measurement of particle size and internal boundaries in opaque bodies. The present work intends to show that the same methods can be used to evaluate some of the parameters of phase continuity; namely, contiguity, number of contacts, and areas of contact of grains of 1 phase. Application of these concepts may be found in such problems as the calculation of electrical conductivity of 2-phase alloys, or the evaluation of the length of fracture path through grains of a brittle phase more or less dispersed in a matrix. I. DEFINITION The following definitions and derivations are based on 2-phase alloys, of which the units of the microstructure are grains. Contiguity is defined as the average fraction of surface area shared by 1 grain of a phase with all neighboring grains of the same phase. In a 2-phase alloy of constituents A and B, the contiguity of phase B is given by: where Cb is the contiguity of phase B aBß is the average area of contact between a grain of phase B and adjacent grains of phase B, aAB is the average area of contact between a grain of phase B and adjacent grains of phase A. The contiguity is a measure of the average degree of contact between grains of phase B in the 2-phase mixture. The ratio varies from 0 to 1 as the distribution of phase B changes from a completely dispersed to a fully agglomerated structure. Smith and Guttman1 have shown that the relative areas of 2 kinds of interfaces in a volume are directly proportional to the number of interfaces of each type intersected by a random line. The lines can be drawn on metallographically prepared surfaces as long as these are random sections through the sample. The contiguity ratio of phase B then becomes: Cb = 2NBB/NAB + 2N BB [2] where: NBB is the number of interfaces between grains of phase B intersected per unit length of random line. Nab is the number of interfaces between grains of phase B and grains of phase A intersected per unit length of random line. The factor 2 arises in Eq. [2] because each interface B-B is associated with 2 grains of B-phase, whereas the interface A-B involves only 1 grain of B-phase. The calculations of contiguity do not require any assumption as to volume fraction, particle size, or particle shape. Fullman2 gives an expression for the determination of the mean free path between particles. The mean free path PB between grains of phase A, i.e., through grains or agglomerates of phase B, may be found from the relationship: PB =2fB/NAB [3] where fB is the volume fraction of phase B. The calculation of the mean free path is independent of grain shape and grain size distribution. The calculation of the number of contacts and of contact area requires assumptions of grain shape, grain size, and contact shape. In the case of uni-

Jan 1, 1959

By AIME AIME

THE 129th meeting of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers convened at New York City, in the Engineering Societies Building, Feb. 18-20, 1924. On February 21 an excursion was made to the Bethlehem Steel Co., at Bethlehem, where about 200 members and guests were splendidly entertained. An illustrated description of the Bethlehem Plant will be published next month. The meeting and excursion were largely attended; the registration at New York totalled 1276 versus 1201 in 1923. William Kelly, long identified with the iron-mining industry of the Lake Superior district, was elected President of the A. I. M. E. for the coming year, at ,the annual business meeting, Feb. 19, succeeding E. P. Mathewson. The following Directors were also elected (the date signifies year of termination of office; the final figure indicates the "District" the Director represents).

Jan 1, 1924

By P. W. Bridgman

IT is characteristic of most scientific investigators that they are not satisfied with the discovery of new facts, no matter how curious or unexpected, but that along with the factual discovery there is a constant effort to understand It appears that. one's interest in, and satisfaction with, the discovery of an array of news experimental facts is enormously increased if one has at the same time a theory or hypothesis guiding one's expectation of what sort of new experimental discovery may lie around the corner Conversely, as a theoretical physicist one's satisfaction with his theory is greatly enhanced if along with the development of the theory can go the discovery of new experimental facts, confirming or perhaps modifying the theory as it grows Of course, there have been long and stretches in the history of physics in which new data of unquestioned ultimate importance ham e piled up, without much inspiration or illumination in the way of understanding For 50 years spectroscopy had such an and history, but how irksome this was felt to be is plainly shown by the almost audible relief that greeted the first success by Bohr in injecting understanding into the situation, and by the fresh rush of experimenters into this field when the prospect of understanding had once been offered The investigations in the field of high pressure, which have occupied me for a long time,1 until the last few years have been in very much the Same sort of situation as spectroscopy before the advent of Bohr A great many kids, of data were collected for a great many solid and liquid substances, and there could be no question of the importance of these data, because the uniform change of dimensions produced by hydrostatic pressure is perhaps the simplest conceivable type of alteration to which a body can be subjected But except for a few isolated flashes, there was no theoretical illumination, so that it had to be to a large extent the enthusiasm of the collector that kept me going However, within the last few years the wave-mechanics theory of solids has progressed so rapidly that

Jan 1, 1938