Julius sumner miller gun series#

Julius sumner miller gun series#

So you can think of stainless steel as being self-repairing.įor me, the stainless car (the DeLorean, from Back to the Future) came too late. watch' Why is it so - the ground-breaking TV series with the enigmatic Professor Julius Sumner Miller - ran on the ABC from 1963 to 1986. If that thin surface layer of chromium oxide “rust” is scratched, the chromium reacts with oxygen – and the rusting stops. So stainless steel, depending on the added alloys and the local environment, does not rust to destruction. So once this very thin shiny surface layer of chromium oxide rust forms – the reaction of rusting simply stops. Second, the chromium oxide rust is very tightly adherent – it sticks very firmly to the iron beneath it. First, chromium oxide is very non-porous – water and oxygen can’t get through it. This rust is very different from iron oxide. At the surface, the oxygen combines with the chromium, to create the shiny rust called chromium oxide. Yes, it is mostly iron, but it also has at least 11% chromium. (But if you look up “Pilling Bedworth Ratio”, you’ll see that my “explanation” is a vast simplification.)īut stainless steel is different – in both porosity and adhesion. Next, that fresh iron rusts, and the process repeats until all the iron has turned into soft, porous flaked-off tiny rust fragments. This rust flakes off, leaving behind a new iron surface. The cycle starts with iron rusting on its surface, then water and oxygen diffuse through that new rust. Second, this rust doesn’t “stick” to the iron, and it flakes off very easily. Both water and oxygen quickly diffuse right through it to get at the pure iron metal underneath. This rust spreads and is fragile.įirst, this rust is very porous. Iron can react with oxygen to create iron oxide.

To understand this more, let’s look at plain iron. Physics Today (November 1987) Mathematics and Astronomy: Inquire Based Scientific Education at School. The rust of stainless is both very adherent (or sticky), and not porous. So, it DOES rust, but in a protective way. I use “rust” in the sense of an oxide coating on an underlying metal. Off-screen Julius Sumner Miller was born in Billerica, Massachusetts, as the youngest of nine children. 1 He is best known for his work on children's television programs in North America and Australia. But in general, to be counted as a stainless steel, there has to be a minimum of 11% chromium by weight. Julius Sumner Miller ( April 14, 1987) was an American physicist and television personality. Stainless steels can have different crystalline structures, can be magnetic or non-magnetic, and can have different degrees of corrosion resistance, and hardness. There are about 150 varieties of stainless steel, but only a dozen-or-two are in common use. By the early 1900s various stainless steel alloys were used for a chrome-nickel hull for a ship, corrosion-resistant gun barrels and humble cutlery. In 1872, John T Woods and John Clark from England patented a “Water Resistant” alloy – quite similar to today’s stainless steel.

Back in 1821, the French metallurgist, Pierre Berthier, added chromium to iron to make the iron more resistant to corrosion.