Alloys, or Time to Allay The Unkowns

A couple classes ago, it became clear that very few people knew anything about alloys. Whats that? Well, this can be attributed to freshman year Honors Biology. Anyways, I've done a little research on alloys and here are my findings.

Alloys are mixtures composed of two or more elements, one of which is a metal. Generally, alloys are made by melting a mixture of various ingredients and allowing them to cool down as a mixture. The properties of the alloys tend to be superior to their component alloys. Thus, the alloys are made to create a more ideal composition to carry on a certain task.

Sterling silver is 92.5% silver (Ag) and 7.5% copper (Cu). This alloy is harder and more durable than the "pure" silver. Yet, since the alloy contains some copper in it, sterling silver is still soft enough to be used in jewelry, tableware and many other items that we use every single day without realizing it.

A commonly known alloy is bronze, composed of 87.5% copper and 12.5% tin. Bronze is harder than copper, yet easier to cast. This is why bronze and other similar alloys are used in coinage.

There are so many alloys that have been created around the world. To highlight a few more, there's several types of steels made of iron, carbon, boron, chromium, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, tungsten and vanadium. Steel is made to have properties like corrosion resistance, hardness, toughness, and ductility (can be made into a thin wire, pliable still). Steel can be used in bicycle frames. Dental amalgam, and alloy of mercury, zinc and silver, is used by dentists to fill cavities in teeth. This alloy is perfect for that task since it hardens while expanding.

Substitutional alloys are made when the atoms of the different components in the mixture are the same size. If the atomic sizes of the atoms are different, the smaller one will fit in between the spaces of the large one. That would be an interstitial alloy, which steels are.