STEEL by Carla Mooney Content Consultant Emmanuel De Moor Assistant Professor George S Ansell Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Colorado School of Mines INSIDE THE INDUSTRY BUSINESS BIG Essential Library An Imprint of Abdo Publishing abdopublishing com
1 STEEL A CRITICAL INDUSTRY For more than a century steel has been an integral part of daily life People prepare meals in stainless steel cookware and ride steel train cars on steel rails to work in steel-framed skyscrapers Orthodontists straighten teeth with steel braces while surgeons operate with steel scalpels As the uses for steel have expanded over the past 50 years its weaknesses have mostly remained the same Like other metals steel is vulnerable to the corrosive effects of water and salt and the abrasive effects of materials such as sand But in 2015 researchers at Harvard University announced they had found a way to improve this crucial metal The researchers created a new surface coating for steel They announced the coating could repel any type of liquid making the steel stronger and more durable This research is an example of hard core classic material science said Harvard’s Joanna Aizenberg We took a material that changed the world and asked how can we make it better 1 From cars on the streets to enormous skyscrapers modern cities are built largely from steel 5
