Science & Nature

Metal objects can be heated by magnetic induction. This method, called induction heating, has been used successfully in industry, research and home kitchens. Heat can be generated precisely and...

Gold is where you find it. When the price of gold rises, more and more people are out looking for nature's golden treasure. A nugget is a naturally occurring chunk of native gold. Gold nuggets...

Listed as an alkali metal on the periodic table of the elements, potassium (chemical symbol K, atomic number 19) is strongly electropositive, which means it readily gives up an electron, producing...

Tubular welding wire comes in dozens of different metal grades and alloys, designed specifically for the type of material to be welded. The manufacturing process begins with massive coils of...

Meteors are space rocks---small pieces of rock or metal that enter our atmosphere. According to NASA, meteors can zip through our atmosphere at 25,000 miles an hour and heat to more than 3,000...

Rust is a combination of the oxides of iron. It forms when some types of iron alloys are exposed to the atmosphere for a prolonged period of time. You can prevent rust by passing an electrical...

Snakes are integral parts of the ecosystems they participate in and can manage rodent and other small animal populations around your yard. Nonetheless, they may pose a threat to birds nesting in...

Plastic parts can be coated with a thin layer of metal for aesthetic, conduction, and static reduction purposes. Coating plastic parts with metal is difficult, because traditional metal coating...

The manufacturer purchases 100-meter rolls of aluminum alloy sheet metal with a width anywhere one and two meters. At the factory, a ceiling-mounted crane slides the roll onto a machine called an...

Vanadium is a soft metal that is one of the metals on the Periodic Table of Elements. It was discovered by mineralogist Andres Manuel del Rio in 1803 in Mexico, who called it panchromium, because...

Mercury, or "quicksilver," is a transition metal, in the same column of the periodic table as the metals zinc and cadmium; yet they are solid at standard conditions of temperature and pressure,...

What good is a birdhouse without any birds? Here are some things to keep in mind when putting up a birdhouse in your yard to make sure birds actually want to live in it.

A very simple doorbell can be constructed by creating a circuit that is completed or broken by the press of a button. This is basically how all doorbells work. The oscillation of the circuit's...

Named after Strontian, a town in Scotland, strontium (Sr) was nearly discovered for the first time in 1790 by Adair Crawford, who isolated a new mineral that he called strontianite. The elemental...

Chemical etching, also known as metal etching, is a process of dissolving metals or glasses in acids to make them into a particular shape. There are two main types of chemical etching: the process...

Metal spinning is a fabrication process that involves forming a sheet-metal blank into a shaped part that is symmetric around its axis. Its applications range from making custom parts to...

Nickel cadmium and nickel metal hydride batteries are similar in composition but have several key differences in terms of properties and uses. Both have a nickel electrode that can regain...

Electroplating uses an electrical current to plate an object with another material. The electrical current reduces the cations (positively charged ions) of a desired material and coats a thin...

Neodymium is not one of the best-known of chemical elements, but it is one of the most useful in today's society. Neodymium is relatively safe to produce and use, exists as a common metal on the...

Batteries store electrical power so that devices that require electricity can operate even in the absence of a live power source such as a wall outlet. Batteries store electrical power through the...

Salt water is water with a high salt concentration. Soft water has very low levels of dissolved metals and salts. Fresh water (most rivers and lakes) falls between these extremes.

Cesium is an alkali metal with the atomic number 55 in the periodic table of elements. Its name comes from the Latin word for sky blue--"caesius"--because the metal's spectrum contains blue lines.

Soldering is a method of attaching two metal surfaces to one another. A soldering gun, iron or torch are hand-held tools used to heat the solder material to its melting point in a small,...

Cesium is an alkaline metal with atomic number 55. It has various properties and uses, as it is the most alkaline and electropositive metal and one with the greatest number of isotopes.

Metals, such as iron and steel, naturally contain microscopic magnets inside their structure, but these do not attract to anything because all of these atomic magnets point in different directions...

From a refrigerator magnet to the magnetic strip on a debit card, magnets allow us to navigate the globe, run our computers, use most machines and drive from place to place effortlessly.

Permanent mold casting techniques help create the thousands of simple metal parts that are identical copies needed to replace worn out components in machines around the world. Sand mold castings...

Pewter is a soft, malleable metal that graces many people's kitchens or jewelry boxes. This traditional metal--among the easiest to work with--is durable, versatile and easy to care for, although...

Before a metal can be electroplated with copper (referred to as the "target metal"), it must be cleaned of grease, oxides and dried-on film. A mechanical abrasive (e.g., a circular or linear...

Electroplating is a process that uses electrical current to deposit a layer of one material onto another material. It's often used to plate one metal with another, whether for changing the...

Electroplating is a chemical reaction that places a thin coating of one metal to onto the surface of another metal. Electroplating is often used to create cheap jewelry, but it now being used more...

The glass needs to be cleaned of all debris or smudges before the backing is applied. This keeps the coating from looking distorted or from having places that it didn't cover the glass. The metal...

Metal detectors use a coil of electrical wire which has an electrical current passing through it. When a piece of metal comes close enough to the coil, it amplifies the electromagnetic signal...

One meaning of the word "quick" is "living." Quicksilver refers to the silvery, ready-to-move (as if alive) liquid metal mercury. Indeed, another name for mercury is hydrargyrum, or "watery...

A metal detector can be used to find metal items that are buried underground as a hobby and a business. Commercial metal detectors have a range of controls that will allow you to find the...

Isostatic pressing is a manufacturing process used to create powder metal or PM parts. The process allows for the manufacture of near-net parts, which means that the product is very close to...

Copper is used for electrical wiring, for plumbing, for the manufacture of alloys, in fungicides and in insecticides. It is also used in art and in coinage. Copper is recyclable. Freshly...

Iron, one of the most abundant elements on Earth, helped give rise to entire civilizations and is the key ingredient in steel, without which many of our modern structures would not be standing....

Aluminum is a silvery whitish metal that is very malleable and conductive. It is rarely used by itself, but made into aluminum alloys by mixing it with other elements such as copper or silicon. ...

An electronic metal detector relies on electromagnetic induction to detect metal. This principle of electromagnetism describes the production of voltage in a metal object when it moves through a...

Metal detectors rely on the ability of metal to produce a voltage when it moves through a magnetic field. The metal detector has a coil of electrical wire that produces the magnetic field. When...

Deer hunting season is almost here. Some hunters like to leave some food to keep deer in their favorite hunting spots. Recycle things you may already have in your garage.

Cesium is a soft white alkali metal, atomic number 55 on the periodic table of the elements. In its "family" are the other alkali metals, lithium, sodium, potassium and rubidium. In nature, it...

Empty balloons bought at the store, upon being blown up, don't float. In fact, if one holds a blown-up balloon in the air, it will sink.

While tin is technically considered a "common" metal instead of a precious metal like gold, tin is still rare. It may be the least available of all common metals. This means that making anything...

For hundreds of years, pitcher pumps have allowed people to extract water from underground wells with relatively little effort (compared to hauling buckets from a stream), expense (compared to...

Rhenium, discovered in Germany in 1925, is a transitional metal, and one of the rarest naturally occurring elements in the world. It is a very dense metal, with a higher melting point than every...

Plasma, in this situation, refers to ionized gas. Plasma cutting is the process of using this ionized gas at high pressure to conduct an electrical current to a workpiece, which is a conductive...

You can make lock picks from thin, resilient strips of metal by grinding them to appropriate shapes and sizes. A strip of metal may be bent to an "L" shape to serve as a tension wrench.

Magnets are pieces of metals containing iron, cobalt, nickel or steel which have all of their molecules aligned in the same direction. Each molecule has a north and a south pole which when...