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Re: Tungsten

Original poster: DRIEBEN@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 

Jared, Gary,

I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to go with Gary
on this. "Pure" tungsten has a melting point
of ~6170*F and a specific gravity of 19.3 and
I just can't see anything with those properties
being "softer than lead" which has a melting
point of a mere 621*F, BTW. Of course mercury
has a specific gravity of 13.5 but is liquid
at room temp (-38*F is its melting point, I believe).
Maybe some of the more chemically inclined list
members could jump in on settling the hardness
scale that pure tungsten would fall into.

David Rieben

----- Original Message -----
From: Tesla list <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thursday, April 7, 2005 6:28 pm
Subject: Re: Tungsten

> Original poster: jdwarshui@xxxxxxxxx
>
> Hi: Gary
> From: Jared
>
> Yes: I have worn deep ruts in grinding wheels dressing TIG rods.
> It is
> hard to believe that in its pure form, tungsten should be so soft.
>
> Carbon is also soft, unless of course it is perfectly covalently
> bonded then you get diamonds.
>
> Iron is considered soft as well, but again in it's pure crystaline
> form it exceeds the strength of the strongest alloy steel.
>
> My understanding is that it only takes a handfull of boron to produce
> tons of high strength steel. Boron has a real tiny atomic radius
> so it
> gets wedged between crstals making it nearly impossible for
> dislocations to move.
>
>
>