Materials science

“ Concurrently with these technical developments of coal-tar products, the scientific chemist was carrying on his investigations. The compounds which science had given to commerce were made on a scale that enabled the investigator to obtain his materials in quantities that appeared fabulous in the early days when aniline was regarded as a laboratory curiosity, and magenta had been seen by only a few chemists.
The fundamental problem which the modern chemist seeks to solve is in the first place the composition of a compound, i.e. ”

“ I have also noted that in metallurgical and textile works, but above all in factories of heavy chemicals and pharmaceutical specialties, chemists exercise analytical control of the raw materials which enter into the process. At some places we found wonderful laboratories in which many chemists were employed. We saw above all how your universities and technical schools are endeavoring to promote our science. Excellent representatives of scientific chemistry are employed as teachers. Scientific research is carried on more and more. ”

“ There is no one part of the Arts and Sciences, but to which Chemistry has relation, and even the most important relation. In all manufactures, whether wood or metal—clay or stone—wax or glass—paper or cloth, or what not, the knowledge of Chemistry is essential. It is to the science of Chemistry that we owe all our artificial productions, it is to the science of Chemistry that we owe all our knowledge and comprehension of natural productions, and their adaption to our several uses. ”

“ Electric engineering, too, is intimately connected with physics. Chemistry is of importance in the manufacture of iron, steel, and other metals, and the formation of alloys, and in its relation to explosives. A knowledge of geology is indispensable in directing a search for coal, iron ore, and the metals, and in the execution of all works going below the surface. ”

“ Each article is put down in a catalogue which shows the shelf or bottle where it may be found. Every known metal, every chemical known to science, every kind of glass, stone, earth, wood, fibre, paper, skin, cloth, is to be found there. In making up the chemical collection an assistant was kept at work for weeks going through the three most exhaustive works on chemistry in English, French, and German, making a note of every substance mentioned, and this list constituted the order for chemicals, an order, by the way, which it required seven months to fill. ”

“ For example; the minerals which compose our planet, or are found in it, have been produced and are held together by the laws of mechanical aggregation and by those of chemical union. It is the business of the abstract sciences, Physics and Chemistry, to ascertain these laws: to discover how and under what conditions bodies may become aggregated, and what are the possible modes and results of chemical combination. The great majority of these aggregations and combinations take place, so far as we are aware, only in our laboratories; with these the concrete science, Mineralogy, has nothing to do. ”

“ In scores of laboratories in Europe and America there are to-day chemists, diligently and quietly, with the patience, if not with the enthusiasm, of the ancient adept, endeavoring to determine by the aid of the prodigious resources of modern science the ever doubtful question of the transmutation of metals. ”

“ Now composition and decomposition are the subjects of Chemistry; and thus we find that we are insensibly but irresistibly led into the domain of that science. The highest generalizations to which we can look, in advancing from the elementary facts of electricity and galvanism, must involve chemical notions; we must therefore, in laying out the platform of these sciences, make provision for that convergence of mechanical and chemical theory, which they are to exhibit as we ascend. ”

“ New fields of research have been opened, which, widening ever since, show as yet no signs of approaching limits. Chemical analysis has been simplified, many optical researches facilitated, and four new metals discovered. ”

“ And the study of the alloys has in turn led to the recent development of metallography. It would even seem that through the study of the intimate structure of metals, prompted by the needs of engineers, we are within measurable distance of arriving at a knowledge of the secret of crystallogenesis. Everything points to the probability of a very great and rapid advance in that fascinating branch of pure science at no distant date. ”

“ Applied chemistry has introduced into human life no radical novelty of the importance of the heat-engine or the telegraph. It has vastly increased the production of various types of substance the most important being metals. But there were explosives, dyes, and drugs before chemistry was a science, and its progress along present lines will mainly alter life in a quantitative manner. ”

“ The importance of the chemical laboratory to a tool-steel plant cannot be over-estimated. Every heat of steel is analyzed for each element, and check analyses obtained; also, every substance used in the mix is analyzed for all impurities. The importance of using pure base materials is known to all manufacturers despite chemical evidence that certain detrimental elements are removed in the process of manufacture. ”

“ It was early discovered that the forces at work in the formation of minerals escaped the observation of the mineralogists, and, though observed, were considered outside the domain of chemistry. The chemist's aim was to form a mineral like the one found in Nature; but the mineralogist, in addition, must use analogous processes to. those in Nature. In the chemical sense if the artificial product had the correct chemical composition, reaction, physical properties, such as density, boiling point, and the like, the synthesis was complete. ”

“ A chemical friend writes to me, that "The metals seem to be composite bodies, which nature is perpetually preparing; and it may be reserved for the future researches of science to trace, and perhaps to imitate, some of these curious operations." ”

“ The more securely chemistry had established its household, the more willingly were its services offered to its neighbors. In investigating the composition of minerals, an exact science was created out of our collections of specimens. ”

“ As yet little work of an exact and quantitative nature has been done on actual rocks or on mixtures resembling them in composition, but at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, an elaborate series of experiments in the synthesis of minerals and the properties of mixtures of these is being carried on, with all the refinements which modern science can suggest. ”

“ It is certainly the case that people in general, and even people very well informed in other subjects, have but the vaguest notions of the nature of chemical actions, and of the meaning of the terms belonging to that science. For example, one of our most popular and justly esteemed writers, treating of the very subject of iron extraction, calls the ore a matrix, thereby implying that the iron as metal is disseminated in detached fragments throughout the mass, which is a conception inconsistent with the facts. ”

“ Besides a study of the chemistry of the elements and their compounds, the course includes a brief survey of certain of the more important industrial processes, such as the manufacture of the elementary gases, the acids, soda, glass, cement, and metals. The laboratory work is chosen so as to illustrate the current lectures. In order to emphasize the quantitative nature of the science, the student is required to solve a large number of numerical problems based on chemical processes and to do a certain amount of actual quantitative work in the laboratory. ”

“ To these difficulties it must be added, that the combinations of mineral substances are multiplied to a great extent. A little application, however, particularly if the student be possessed of a collection of arranged and named specimens, which he will have no difficulty in procuring at a reasonable price, will enable him to overcome all the obstacles that otherwise might impede his progress in beginning to acquire a knowledge of this interesting science. ”

“ In the inorganic world, where the great phenomena of life are wanting, we have constantly exhibited the working of powers of a strangely complicated kind. The symmetrical arrangement of crystals—the diversified characters of mineral formations—the systematic aggregations of particles to form masses possessing properties of a peculiar and striking nature—all prove, that agencies, which science, with all its refinements, has not yet detected, are unceasingly at work. ”

“ Gradually we find that a certain class of men began to make use of chemical facts, as far as they were then known, for a very definite purpose. This was, to convert ordinary base metals into that metal which possessed the greatest value—gold. This purpose gave a powerful incentive to the study of chemical phenomena, and, under the influence of the natural passion which affected a comparatively large number of men, the subject of chemistry grew apace. ”

“ In the first place, the quantity of materials being always very great in metallurgy, requires corresponding adaptations of apparatus, and often produces peculiar phenomena; in the second place, the agents to be employed for treating great masses, must be selected with a view to economy, as well as to chemical action. In analytical chemistry, the main object being exactness of result, and purity of product, little attention is bestowed upon the value of the reagents, on account of the small quantity required for any particular process. ”

“ So the metals would naturally gravitate to the centre of the fluid earth, and around them might be several zones of successively lighter compounds, the exterior being the least heavy of all, and answering to the slags of the furnace. ”

“ Each experiment suggests new experiments; each discovery points toward others, and the connecting theories will grow up around the conception of chemical structure. It is the only conception yet clearly recognized which is general enough to cover the whole field.
It has already been argued that the physical study of minerals is subordinate to their chemical investigation, for the reason that all properties depend upon composition. ”

“ Such may be the illiberal conclusions of the ignorant and narrow-minded; but those who can duly estimate the advantages of enlarging the sphere of science, must be convinced that the acquisition of every new fact, however unconnected it may at first appear with practical utility, must ultimately prove beneficial to mankind. But these remarks are scarcely applicable to the present subject; for some of the new metals have already proved eminently useful as chemical agents, and are likely soon to be employed in the arts. ”

“ The history of the successive discovery, commixture, and applications of the metals, from copper and bronze down to manganese, platinum, and aluminium, or of the successive discovery and utilisation of sources of power—the natural sources, such as water and wind, the artificially procured, such as steam, gas, and electricity—or of the production and manufacture of materials available for clothing, wool, hair, linen, silk, cotton, would show how every step becomes the basis for another step, and how inventions in one department suggest or facilitate inventions in another. ”

“ But the chemist who has invented a way for the artificial production of an organic body can well afford to forego all claims to the discovery of a new metal, for it would be possible to discover ten unknown elements without the expenditure of so much genius as appertains to the masterly work which you, in association with Liebig, have accomplished and have just communicated to the scientific world.—Johan Jakob Berzelius. ”

“ In the classification of this science, it has been divided into inorganic chemistry, relating to metals, minerals and bodies not associated with organic life, and organic chemistry, which was formerly limited to matter associated with or the result of growth or life processes, but which is now extended to the broader field of all carbon compounds. ”

“ The study of rocks in this way has been prosecuted so energetically of late, that it is common to speak of the sub-sciences micro-lithology, micro-petrology, etc., and the appearances of every mineral are now well understood by those skilled in observation, so that the conclusions are often more reliable than those obtained by ultimate chemical analysis. ”

“ It must happen in some cases that the component materials are mixed in such proportions as to prepare them readily to enter into chemical union, and form new minerals; while in other cases the mass may be more homogeneous, or the proportions less adapted for such union. ”

“ One introductory lecture is given on the principles of chemistry as the basis of understanding the composition of minerals, and the four following lessons are devoted to a study of the physical properties, mainly crystallography. During the remaining lessons, about one hundred and fifty of the commonest mineral species are studied, the class being required to learn to recognize each species and be able to tell its composition. ”

“ Compare CO and CO2. (3) In the arrangement of atoms, i.e. the molecular structure. Ethyl alcohol and methyl ether have the same number of the same elements, C2H6O, but their molecular structure is not the same, and hence their properties differ.
Qualitative analysis shows what elements enter into a compound; quantitative analysis shows the proportion of these elements; structural analysis exhibits molecular structure, and is the branch to which organic chemists are now giving particular attention. `
A specialist often works for years to synthesize a series of compounds in the laboratory. ”

“ In considering the application of chemistry to the improvement of the useful arts, a wide field of contemplation opens to our view. So extensive indeed are its influence and importance, that, in most of the arts, the processes that are employed, depend on chemical principles. Barely to mention some of these arts, will afford ample illustration of its extensive utility: for the art of extracting metals from their ores, of purifying and alloying them with each other, and of forming instruments and utensils, whether for useful or ornamental purposes, almost all the processes are purely chemical. ”