• Question: How hot can a material get before it's destroyed?

    Asked by anon-232805 to Anna, Alin on 12 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Anna Kalorkoti

      Anna Kalorkoti answered on 12 Nov 2019:


      It very much depends on the material! Imagine a statue made from a block of ice: that will melt & be destroyed at the temperature of a normal room. If you made the same sculpture out of plastic, it’ll be fine in your normal room but might melt if you put it in an oven, and even if it doesn’t melt, it might become softer than you want it to. If you use metal, it’ll probably be fine in the oven, although there are a few metals this isn’t true for (google “gallium spoon” to see some fun examples!).

      It’s very important as a materials scientist to know what sort of temperature a material is likely to be used at, so you can make sure you’re choosing the right material for the job. You also need to know how quickly the material is likely to be heated up or cooled down: most materials get bigger when you heat them up, so if you heat something very quickly, it tries to get bigger very quickly and this can make it break. If you give it more time to get bigger by heating it slowly, it’s less likely to break, even if the final temperatures are the same.

    • Photo: Alin Elena

      Alin Elena answered on 14 Nov 2019:


      I will add to Anna’s answer the philosophical part.
      Materials do not really destroy they just transform in something else. This transformation may make the material unsuitable for what you want to use. Temperature is one of the factors that may induce the transformation of the material but pressure or light can do the same.

Comments