You are able to not go one day without placing your life in the hands of some thing made of metal. Whether it is the bridge you need to cross every single day on the way to work, the steel girders holding the roof above your head, or the parts holding your vehicle together, metal is an essential part of the modern world, and it is of extreme importance that it is of the highest standard.
As well as the lifesaving aspect, what about the aesthetic aspect of metal use? use? How do you understand that the 22 Carat ring you just bought is really of such a high quality, and not just a dud?
This is where chemical testing is available in. Chemical tests can be used to evaluate the purity of a metal, allowing determination of the strength of a bridge, or the standard of jewellery. Two kinds of chemical testing are discussed in this article: the salt spray test, and ICP analysis.
The Salt Spray Test is used to test especially coated metals due to their corrosion resistance. This is a sort of accelerated corrosion used to forecast how appropriate a specific coating will soon be at preventing corrosion. The material in question is sprayed with salt, and the time taken for oxides to look on the surface of the metal is recorded; the more corrosion resistant the material the longer it will require for oxides to seem. This test is rapid and simple to perform but is not completely accurate, as corrosion is just a complex process involving many interfering variables. Nonetheless this technique is normally found in industry to make an approximation of a specific substance’s anticipated corrosion resistance as time passes.
Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (or ICP analysis) is a technique used to look for the concentrations of chemical elements in a sample. This strategy provides you with a notion of the purity of your material, as well as an indicator of which contaminants may possibly be there. It works by ionising the material in question by use of inductively coupled plasma, generated by strong magnets, and then using mass spectrometry to analyse the materials present.
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