Aston Features
and News
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| D.B. Cooper Unsolved Skyjacking |
Click on any of the images below for a larger view:
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On November 24, 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper boarded a one-way flight from Portland to Seattle. Shortly after takeoff, he informed the flight attendant that he had a bomb in his briefcase and demanded four parachutes and $200,000 in ransom. After his demands were met in Seattle, the plane took off again bound for Reno, Nevada. Upon opening the aft stairs, the hijacker jumped out somewhere over southern Washington and disappeared. The incident remains the only unsolved hijacking in U.S. history.
See how Aston was involved at http://www.citizensleuths.com/.
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| Dinosaur Bones |
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Okay, so T-Rex fossil bones are
not made of metal and they didn’t have implants, but stay tuned
for future updates on how metallurgy is involved.
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| Archaic Copper |
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The native inhabitants of Michigan,
Wisconsin and Illinois made use of float copper from Lake Gitche
Gumee (Lake Superior) as far as back as 6500 BC. The copper was pure
and used for personal adornment as well as simple tools and trading.
Microstructural examinations revealed the artifacts were annealed
as well as hot forged. Who knew the local metal working and heat
treating industry was 8500 years old?
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| ASM Materials Camp |
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ASTON continues to host ASM Materials
Camps. These summer camps introduce high school juniors and seniors
to materials science and failure analysis. The students attend lectures
at local universities and colleges, go on field trips to local manufacturers
and are challenged to perform a hands on failure analysis
in our lab. With the guidance of volunteer staff, they learn to use
laboratory equipment and reference collections to solve their problem.
They discover their most important tool in the laboratory is not all
of the fancy equipment they find in our lab, but their own minds. They
always do great!
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| Bronze Arrowhead |
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Material science is so important
to human development that our progress is defined by the materials
available to the civilizations at the time. We went from paleolithic
(old stone age), neolithic (new stone age), copper age, bronze age
and iron age to the current atomic age.
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| Hardness Testing |
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Hardness testing is the easiest
test to perform in our lab. but, no pun intended, it can be one of
the hardest tests to do. Properly, that is.
Hardness is a property determined by measuring
the resistance to deformation to the applied load perpendicularly
indenting into the sample as expressed
by the depth of penetration. The penetration is measured by a depth
gauge and translated into a hardness number. It is crucial to realize
that all conventional hardness testing methods involve sampling a
volume of material.
The amount of material actually sampled is a function of the indentor
selected, the applied load and the material properties. If the sampled
volume is limited by the physical size of the piece to be tested,
then you may actually be sampling the underlying anvil or pushing
out the
edge of the sample. More
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| New England |
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A pinhole corrosion problem in copper
pipe required an on-site inspection in central Vermont. We took a
few extra days to tour through New Hampshire and Maine and have photos
to share. Highlights included touring through Ben & Jerry's,
Montpelier, Woodstock, Portsmouth, Fort Constitution, tidal pools
at Acadia National Park, whale watching from Rye and the VINS raptor
rehabilitation sanctuary.
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| Hawaii |
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What does a lab from the flatlands
of Illinois have to do with Hawaii? We would like to say that ASTON
Kaanapali is our
Pacific Rim branch, but we take our role as truth seekers very
seriously. Actually, ASTON has reached far across the Pacific to
analyze corrosive
particles as well as failure work on Iowa class battleship munitions
such as the Missouri now docked near the Arizona Memorial in Pearl
Harbor.
We thought it interesting that we look for slag on a microscopic
scale and couldn't help but see the irony of the massive lava
flows in Volcano
National Park.
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| Meteorites |
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With the infinitesimally slow cooling
rate in space and the incredible impact required to launch them towards
Earth, metallic meteorites
have fascinating microstructures unlike anything naturally produced
on Earth. We wish we had more time to explore these jewels from
space! Stay tuned as we add more meteorites to our collection and
post our favorite micrographs.
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