Search Documents

By Thomas T., Read

ANY discussion of State-supported schools of mining and A metallurgy needs to be prefaced by a definition, since the first school to offer a mining curriculum, the Pennsylvania Polytechnic College, was established by a grant from the State. But, so far as can be determined, it received no further State support. It would be tiresome to go into precise details,. and it will be enough to stipulate that by State schools are meant those which derive their main financial support from regular appropriations made by a State legislature. The University of Michigan was the first of these to offer a mineral industry curriculum; its story, as well as those of Wisconsin and Illinois, has been related in the preceding chapter.* Arranging the others in chronological order involves making a decision as to what weight to attach to plans for giving instruction, as contrasted with its , effective initiation. This may appropriately be illustrated by the history of mineral industry education in California. California Among those who came to California in 1849 and the following years were many New Englanders who had a keen interest in education. Some of them, mostly Congregationalists and Presbyterians, sought to establish a school of higher education around San Francisco Bay and eventually succeeded in opening the "Scientific and Classical School at Contra Costa' in Oakland, at Broadway and 5th St., on June 20, 1853. This prospered so well that it was chartered by the State as the "College of California" on April, 13, 1855. Developing so rapidly that its quarters became cramped, in 1864 it not only bought a tract of

Jan 1, 1941

By Dale A. Vaughan, Oliver M. Stewart, Charles M. Schwartz

Solid-solubility limits at 1500°, l000q and 500°C for carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in high-purity tantalum were determined by X-ray lattice-parameter methods. For carbon, the solubility was found to be 0.17 at. pct at 1500°C, and less than 0.07 at. pct at 1000°C. A nitrogen solubility of 3.70 at. pct at 1500° C decreases linearly with temperature to 2.75 at. pct at 1000°C, and 1.8 at. pct at 500°C. In the case of oxygen, the solubility was found to be 3.65 at. pct at 1500°C, 2.95 at. pct at 1000°C, and 2.5 at. pct at 500°C. The phases Ta2C, the low-temperature modification of Ta205, and Ta,N of unknown composition but which has a superlattice structure based upon the original bcc tantalum lattice have been identified as the initial precipitates in the respective systems. Metallographic methods were employed to verify the X-ray analyses. The etching behavior of Ta is discussed in terms of lattice i?rzperfections and precipitate phases. The excellent fabricability, high melting point, and nuclear properties of tantalum are responsible for interest in this refractory metal. Data on the solid solubility of the interstitial elements (oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon) in tantalum and on the precipitate phases are somewhat limited. The significant contributions are discussed below. Because the purity of electron-beam melted tantalum (only recently available) is considerably higher than that used in previous studies, the present investigation was initiated. Gebhardt et all-3 have investigated the tantalum-oxygen and tantalum-nitrogen systems with particular reference to the changes in physical properties and to the rates of reaction between these gases and the metal. The solubility of oxygen in tantalum was reported2 to be 3.7 at. pet at 1500°, 2.3 at. pet at 100O°C, and 1.4 at. pct at 750°C. Schonberg4 reported that several oxide phases (Ta40, Ta,O, TaO and Ta,05) exist while X-ray studies by Gebhardtl showed only two oxides, Ta,05 and an unidentified phase which was associated with a platelet-type precipitate. La-gergren and Magneli,' however, questioned the existence of compounds other than the two allotropic modifications of Ta,05 for the tantalum-oxygen system. In the case of nitrogen, the solubility was estab- lished by Gebhardt3 to be of the order of 7 at. pct at 1800°c. The solubility was reported to decrease rapidly with temperature, and, although no limits were established, a precipitate phase was observed by Gebhardt except when the high-nitrogen specimens were cooled very rapidly from the reaction temperature of 1800c. He reported the initial precipitate phase to be a tetragonal distortion of the bcc tantalum lattice while Schonberg6 reported the phase lowest in nitrogen Jo be a cubic super-lattice with a cell size of 10.11 A. Two other nitride phases, Ta,N and TaN, were reported; these appear to be isomor-phous with the carbides of tantalum. The tantalum-carbon system was investigated by Ellinger7 and by Lesser and Braurer. Two compounds, Ta,C and TaC, were reported to exist, each with a range of composition. The solubility of carbon in tantalum was found to be practically nil at all temperatures. Thus, of the interstitial elements which are present in small amounts in high-purity tantalum, carbon might be expected to form precipitates. The present investigation was initiated to obtain additional data on the solid-solubility limits of these interstitials at 1500°, 1000°, and 500' with particular emphasis on the distribution and the identification of the precipitate phases. EXPERIMENTAL WORK AND RESULTS In the present investigations of the solid solubility and of the precipitate phases in the systems tantalum-nitrogen, -oxygen, and -carbon, high-purity tantalum was reacted with high-purity gases, homogenized at 1800°c, and annealed at and quenched from 1500°, 1000,

Jan 1, 1962

By F. Forward, H. Veltman, A. Vizsolyi

Activities of oxides in the ternary FeO-MnO-SiO system are calculated from data on the binaries, using the Gibbs -Schuhmann method. These activity data are used, together with thermodynamic relations, to calculate the contents of oxygen, silicon, and manganese in liquid iron, and the composition of the corresponding oxide phases in equilibrium with it. Excellent agreement was found between calculated and experimental metal compositions, indicating that thermodynamic methods, such as those presented, can supply useful data on slag-metal equilibria, and are therefore capable of wider application. When molten steel containing oxygen is treated with a deoxidizer, the product of the reaction is composed of the oxides of the deoxidizing elements together with more or less iron oxide. This assemblage of oxides is presumably very close to equilibrium with the melt since it is formed directly from elements dissolved in it. Therefore, it is likely that metal analyses corresponding to a given oxide phase composition are calculable with considerable precision where sufficient information is available on activities in both phases. The present study was made to test this hypothesis in the case of deoxidation by silicon and manganese. Here experimental data on the relationship among oxygen, silicon, and manganese in the metal phase are available, as are activity data for the MnO-SiO2, FeO-SiO2, and FeO-MnO binary systems. A further objective was to demonstrate in a specific example how gaps in the data may be filled by judicious interpolation, and how the Gibbs-Schuhmann method is applied to obtain activities in ternary systems. The rigorous derivation of the latter, requiring considerable facility in handling partial differential equations, tends to mask the real simplicity of the method, and repel the very engineers and experimenters who would benefit the most from its use. I) GENERAL PROCEDURE Deoxidation of steel with silicon and manganese results in the formation of two phases, metal and oxide. The number of components is four—Fe, Mn, Si, and 0. The phase rule then gives the number of degrees of freedom: If temperature and pressure are fixed, 2 deg of freedom remain. Consequently, it suffices to fix the concentration of two of the components of the system for all the concentrations to be determined and, at least in principle, calculable. The practical problem is then to discover a straightforward method of calculation with a minimum of trial and error solutions. The type of reactions to be dealt with are like the following: Si (in steel) + 2 O(in steel) = SiO2(in oxide phase) The standard free energy of this reaction is readily obtained from the literature, so that the equilibrium constant can be calculated by the expression: Since the metallurgist is concerned with percentages rather than activities, a real solution requires information that will permit activities to be converted to concentrations. This information is fairly adequate for the elements dissolved in molten steel, but is not available for the FeO-MnO-SiO2 oxide system. Therefore, the first step in this study was to find the relation between activity and concentration for the three oxides making up the system. The next step was the calculation of slag and metal compositions that are in equilibrium with one another. As shown by the phase rule, it is sufficient to assume the values of two composition variables in order to calculate the rest. But which two are picked makes a vast difference in how difficult the calculation turns out to be, so that it is necessary to make preliminary trial of several routes to find the easiest one. A convenient method is to begin with the slag, and to pick FeO concentration and that of one of the other oxides. Starting with the relation between oxygen dissolved in the liquid steel and FeO in the slag permits a good first estimate to be made of the oxygen content of the steel in equilibrium with FeO, because the iron content being fairly close to 100 pct, Fe has an activity close to unity. Using this first estimate of oxygen activity, approximate values of the manganese and silicon contents of the melt are readily calculated from the appropriate equilibrium constants. A minor correction for the depar-

Jan 1, 1963

By T. A. Rickard

Do not write until you have something to say. Think first; then write. In order to be understood, you must know what you wish to say. Clear writing is the consequence of clear thinking. Therefore consider your subject well before you begin to write; ruminate on it; marshal the salient facts in your mind; saturate yourself with the ideas you wish to express and with cognate ideas; then express yourself deliberately. If you are bubbling over with your subject the words will come, but you might as well expect to sail without a breeze as hope to give life to words without the living thought. Here I may advert to the fact that among the uneducated it is a common expectation to acquire the knack of writing without taking the trouble to study the art of literature. I overheard a woman in a suburban train remark to her neighbor: "I'd like to be able to write well without stopping to think about it". She was one of many that would like to do a thing well without the trouble of thinking; but it cannot be done in respect of anything to which thought is essential. The possession of a good voice does not justify a person in expecting to sing successfully to a large audience; before singing in public one has to master the technique of singing; one has to learn first how to breathe properly, how to enunciate, and many other things. The successful singer is an artist, not a megaphone. Most of us would regard a man or a woman without any training in the art of singing as a fool or an impostor if he or she were to give a public concert, yet we do not recognize the equal foolishness and imposture of persons that write books before they have studied the technique of writing. That is why so many books are unreadable, and why many books by clever men are difficult to read. They start to write books before

Jan 1, 1931

By H. H. Kaveler, W. R. Evans, Jack Tarner

The geological features, development history and engineering detail of the Shuler Field and the results of approximately two years of unitized operation of the Shuler Jones Sand Pool, were discussed in a prior publication.' The purpose of this paper is to present the results of pressure maintenance in the Shuler Jones Sand Pool after nine years of unit operation. GENERAL INFORMATION The Shuler Jones Sand Pool is located in and about Section 18, Township 18 South, Range 17 West, Union County, Ark. The pool was discovered .in September, 1937, unitized in February, 1941, and subjected to gas injection operations in July, 1941. Water was first returned to the reservoir in July, 1944. The reservoir is an anticlinal trap covering about 4,000 acres. The 154,000 acre-ft of sandstone initially consisted of approximately 150,000 acre-ft of productive oil zone and 4,000 acre-ft of gas-cap. The average depth of production is 7,400 ft. Maximum closure of the reservoir is 135 ft and the oil column lies between a gas-oil contact at -7,270 ft and a water-oil contact at -7,370 to -7,380 ft. The field is approximately four miles long. east and .west, and one and one-half miles wide. The sand grains are angular and vary from fine to medium size. The porosity of the sandstone averages 20.2 per cent. The specific permeability averages 400 md. Some zones have as high as 30 per cent porosity and specific permeability of 4,000 md. The reservoir rock is not uniform in character but consists of sandstone zones interspersed with shale. The variation in rock characteristics is evident in the electric log and core analyses presented in the original publication. Asphalt present in the pore space of the sandstone limited the reservoir to the southeast and apparently blocked any encroachment of water from that direction. The initial reservoir pressure at a subsea depth of 7,300 ft was 3,520 psi. The reservoir temperature was 198ºF. Initially, the solution gas volume was 765 cu ft per bbl and the reservoir volume factor was 1.45. The gas solubility and formation-volume-factors of the reservoir liquid are related with reservoir pressures above 300 psi as follows: Solution gas, cu ft per cu ft, S = 0.0334 P + 18.65 Formation volume factor of reservoir oil, FVF = 8.0 x 10 -5 P + 1.168 Gas volume factor, standard cu ft of gas equivalent to one cu ft of gas at reservoir conditions of temperature and pressure, F = .062 P - 4 Pressure (P) measured in psia. The equation for the gas volume factor presented above is based on a direct measurement of a sample of the gas and is a correction of that used in the original paper. The gravity of the oil produced is from 32 to 34" API. CALCULATION OF INITIAL OIL IN PLACE The Jones Sand production history is interesting because it lends itself to analysis by material balance. Production statistics from discovery of the Jones Sand through 1949 and material balance calculations of the initial stock tank oil in place are shown in Table I. The usual procedure in testing the application of material balance calculations is to compute the apparent initial volume of oil in place, using production and pressure information obtained at different time periods. If the apparent oil in place volumes computed increase with successive time periods, water encroachment is indicated and approximations must be mads to correct for its influence. The first requirement in utilizing such calculations is reliable reservoir pressure, accumulated gas, oil and water production, and PVT data. Calculations of apparent oil in place in the Jones Pool, based on field data

Jan 1, 1951

By W. R. Evans, H. H. Kaveler, Jack Tarner

The geological features, development history and engineering detail of the Shuler Field and the results of approximately two years of unitized operation of the Shuler Jones Sand Pool, were discussed in a prior publication.' The purpose of this paper is to present the results of pressure maintenance in the Shuler Jones Sand Pool after nine years of unit operation. GENERAL INFORMATION The Shuler Jones Sand Pool is located in and about Section 18, Township 18 South, Range 17 West, Union County, Ark. The pool was discovered .in September, 1937, unitized in February, 1941, and subjected to gas injection operations in July, 1941. Water was first returned to the reservoir in July, 1944. The reservoir is an anticlinal trap covering about 4,000 acres. The 154,000 acre-ft of sandstone initially consisted of approximately 150,000 acre-ft of productive oil zone and 4,000 acre-ft of gas-cap. The average depth of production is 7,400 ft. Maximum closure of the reservoir is 135 ft and the oil column lies between a gas-oil contact at -7,270 ft and a water-oil contact at -7,370 to -7,380 ft. The field is approximately four miles long. east and .west, and one and one-half miles wide. The sand grains are angular and vary from fine to medium size. The porosity of the sandstone averages 20.2 per cent. The specific permeability averages 400 md. Some zones have as high as 30 per cent porosity and specific permeability of 4,000 md. The reservoir rock is not uniform in character but consists of sandstone zones interspersed with shale. The variation in rock characteristics is evident in the electric log and core analyses presented in the original publication. Asphalt present in the pore space of the sandstone limited the reservoir to the southeast and apparently blocked any encroachment of water from that direction. The initial reservoir pressure at a subsea depth of 7,300 ft was 3,520 psi. The reservoir temperature was 198ºF. Initially, the solution gas volume was 765 cu ft per bbl and the reservoir volume factor was 1.45. The gas solubility and formation-volume-factors of the reservoir liquid are related with reservoir pressures above 300 psi as follows: Solution gas, cu ft per cu ft, S = 0.0334 P + 18.65 Formation volume factor of reservoir oil, FVF = 8.0 x 10 -5 P + 1.168 Gas volume factor, standard cu ft of gas equivalent to one cu ft of gas at reservoir conditions of temperature and pressure, F = .062 P - 4 Pressure (P) measured in psia. The equation for the gas volume factor presented above is based on a direct measurement of a sample of the gas and is a correction of that used in the original paper. The gravity of the oil produced is from 32 to 34" API. CALCULATION OF INITIAL OIL IN PLACE The Jones Sand production history is interesting because it lends itself to analysis by material balance. Production statistics from discovery of the Jones Sand through 1949 and material balance calculations of the initial stock tank oil in place are shown in Table I. The usual procedure in testing the application of material balance calculations is to compute the apparent initial volume of oil in place, using production and pressure information obtained at different time periods. If the apparent oil in place volumes computed increase with successive time periods, water encroachment is indicated and approximations must be mads to correct for its influence. The first requirement in utilizing such calculations is reliable reservoir pressure, accumulated gas, oil and water production, and PVT data. Calculations of apparent oil in place in the Jones Pool, based on field data

Jan 1, 1951

By M. J. Marcinkowski, E. N. Hopkins

An investigation has been made of the ß(fcc) — a(hexagonal) transformation which occurs in lanthanum using both electrical resistivity and transmission electron microscopy techniques. It has been shown that the ß phase can be retained below the transformation temperature by rapid quenching but that the sample immediately begins to transform to the a phase. The transformation is observed to nucleate in the vicinity of inclusions. Based on the above observations, a detailed model of the transformation has been advanced which involves the nucleation of an extrinsic stacking fault bounded by a pair of Shockley partial dislocations in the vicinity of some heterogeneity, i.e., an inclusion. The stress field of the resultant dislocation pair acts to nucleate extrinsic faults in adjacent planes and leads quite naturally to the B-a conversion with a minimum of strain energy induced in the crystal. LANTHANUM possesses an fcc structure ß) (8) upon cooling transforms to a hexagonal modification (a) in much the same way as cobalt. The one exception, however, is that the stacking sequence of the closest packed planes in a La is ABAC ABAC, and so forth,1 whereas in cobalt it is ABAB, and so forth, i.e., hep. Mainly on the basis of transmission electron microscopy techniques, there seems to be little doubt that the 0 — a transformation in cobalt involves a dislocation mechanism2 although its exact nature still remains obscure. Although the ß - a transformation in lanthanum is somewhat more complex than that occurring in cobalt, it was thought that its very uniqueness would be helpful in understanding fcc — hexagonal transformations in general. Such a general understanding of these transformations is important since they represent what are perhaps the simplest of the martensitic class of transformations. The experimental techniques used were those of electrical resistivity and transmission electron microscopy. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE The lanthanum used in this investigation was prepared by the calcium reduction of lanthanum fluoride in a tantalum crucible under an argon atmosphere as described by Spedding et al. The residual calcium was removed by vacuum remelting in a tantalum container. Portions of the metal were then analyzed by emission spectroscopy as well as vacuum fusion. The amounts of the various impurities that were found are listed in Table I. A portion of the lanthanum ingot was swaged at room temperature into 0.030-in.-diam rod for the resistivity samples while the remainder was rolled into 0.010-in.-thick sheet for the transmission electron microscopy phase of this investigation. In order to eliminate the plastic deformation induced in the samples during fabrication, they were sealed in evacuated tantalum lined quartz capsules and annealed for 1 hr at 700° C. Specimen resistances were measured using the conventional "four-wire" technique described by MacDonald, 4 employing a type K-3 Universal Potentiometer and a standard 0.001-ohm resistor, both manufactured by Leeds and Northrup Co. By taking into account all of the possible errors in the apparatus, it was felt that the absolute resistivities of the approximately 0.87-in.-long specimens measured are reliable to 3 pct. Resistances from room temperature to 700°C were measured using a vacuum furnace. In order to avoid sample contamination by the thermocouple, chromel-alumel leads were spot-welded into a tantalum shield which in turn was welded to the lanthanum specimen. Resistances below room temperature were obtained by transferring the sample to a helium gas-filled quench tube and slowly dripping liquid nitrogen into a surrounding dewar flask. A steady reduction of temperature to about —190°C was completed in about 23 hr, and the resistances were measured at various temperature intervals. As will be shown shortly, rapid quenching from above about 350°C was sufficient to suppress the B -a transformation initially but subsequent annealing at lower temperatures leads to a partial ß --a conversion. To investigate this aspect of the transformation, the samples were suspended in the hot zone of a helium-filled furnace from which they could be rapidly dropped into the quench tube mentioned previously which was now

Jan 1, 1969

By AIME AIME

T HE appointment of Herbert Hoover to the portfolio of Commerce in the President's Cabinet is to engineers the fulfillment of a long deferred hope to have an engineer in high political office and is a matter of congratulation to us for three reasons; because he is a mining engineer who represents the highest type of idealistic engineering effort; because he is a past president of the Institute; and because he has probably a broader grasp of world problems than any other living engineer. Frank A. Vanderlip in the preface to his book "What Happened to Europe" tells of the many interviews he had with the most prominent men in Europe which were made possible for him by his eminence as a banker and by the courtesy of the American ambassadors. He cites by name such well known figures as Austin Chamberlain, Sir Auckland Geddes, Monsieur Delacroix, Monsieur Briand, Mr. Padkrewski, Mr. Venizelos, Colonel House, General Pershing, Mr. Baruch, and many others and says :

Jan 1, 1921

By C. H. White

Discussion of a Paper by Mr. C. H. White, read at the Atlantic City Meeting, February, 1904. (Annual Meeting, February, 1005.) ARTHUR JARMAN, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (communication to the Secretary*) : All designs for modern metal¬lurgical and chemical laboratories should provide each student's desk with a hood or cupboard for the removal of fumes, but I doubt the advisability of placing air-baths and similar apparatus close to the hot plate. It seems to me that unless the draft be exceptionally strong the fumes from ordinary wet assay work will corrode the iron-work of the fittings, in which case the baths would have to be removed to a general desk in order to lighten the work of the laboratory attendant. Since the laboratory described by Mr. White has been in use for two years, I should like to ask if any inconvenience has resulted from this corrosion. If not, it is certainly an important improvement to have the air-baths and similar apparatus placed -on the student's desk. The hoods described by Mr. White are supplied with a good draft by means of a fan, which gives them a great advantage over those at the metallurgical laboratory at the University, Sydney, in that no doors to the hood are needed. Each hood in the laboratory at Sydney is connected by a glazed earthenware drain-pipe with a vertical flue, 20 ft. high, having a lighted gas jet at the bottom to assist the draft. Although the draft is good, fumes of sulphuric acid cannot be drawn o$ unless the doors of the hood are lowered more than half-way. In my opinion, a fan should be used for the purpose of creating the draft, and glazed drain-tile should invariably be used for the flues because no other material possesses the same advantages. I know of a recent instance in which a laboratory containing

Mar 1, 1905

By Paul J. Fopiano

SOME relationships between the flow characteristics of iron single crystals of 99.9 pct purity and the behavior of imperfections have been investigated. X-ray rocking-curve measurements and etch-pit counts were made as a function of plastic strain, and compared to the stress-strain curve obtained on a modified Polyani tensile machine. Crystals grown from rolled strips of vacuum-melted iron by the strain-anneal method1 had a high preference for a (110) longitudinal direction and a (211) face normal. The tensile specimens were prepared from 2 by i by 0.040 in. single crystals having a gage area of 3 by \ in. Rocking-curve measurements were carried out with a highly perfect germanium monochromating crystal in which the dazz spacing was matched to that of the dZl1 in the ir0n.l Well-collimated CuKal radiation was used throughout. These procedures practically eliminated errors due to geometrical and wavelength resolution. Inasmuch as the rocking-curve half breadth may vary markedly from point to point in the specimen being irradiated, the crystals were strained in place by mounting a hydraulic loading device on the double-crystal spectrometer. The rocking curves were taken after each increment of strain in the unloaded condition, since no observable difference was found in the rocking-curves between the loaded and unloaded states. The rocking-curve half breadths of the as-grown specimens were in the range 90 to 120 sec of arc when the beam irradiated an area of about -£ by -& in. on the specimen. DeMarco and weiss3 have shown that, for a well-colli- mated X-ray beam, irradiating about 10"! sq in. of the very same material, half breadths within 10 pct of the Darwin natural half breadth were observed. Since the rocking-curve specimens were stressed by the load-unload technique, the strain achieved at any given stress depended on the time of holding because of low-temperature creep. Fig. 1 shows the rocking-curve half breadth (also area/peak height) as a function of plastic strain for a relatively short holding time (2 to 5 min) at each stress level. For strains less than 0.1 pct the rocking-curve breadth is essentially constant; it is only for larger strains that there occurs a significant increase in this breadth. Where the holding times at each stress level were longer (by well over an order of magnitude) there occurs a significant increase in the rocking-curve breadth only after plastic strains of the order of 0.6 pct had been introduced into the specimen. This observation is related to the time dependence of creep phenomena and emphasizes the difficulty in comparing data obtained by two such different straining methods. Etch-pit results were obtained using a 2 pct nital etch on specimens strained in the range of 0 to 1 pct. Prior to etching, all specimens were annealed for 3 hr at 150°C, the carbon content being sufficient to decorate the dislocations for strains of at least 1 p~t.~ The data points were all taken from parts of the same single crystal which had been strained with short holding times at stress in increments of strain of the order of tenths of 1 pct. The (211) plane is particularly difficult to etch-pit in vacuum-melted iron and therefore it is felt that these values are as much as an order of magnitude low. Fig. 2 shows the etch-pit density as a function of plastic strain. The smooth curve passing through the data points is not meant to infer a quantitative correlation with the rocking-curve data. What is of interest, however, is the change in etch-pit density in the region of 0.2 pct plastic strain. The first three increments in strain (points 2,3, and 4) did not produce a measurable change in the etch-pit density while subsequent increments did produce a measurable change. While the absolute values of these results do not appear to be cor-

Jan 1, 1967

President MRS. HARRISON SOUDER south Paramus Road Ridgewood, N. J. First Vice-president MRS. ROBERT HURSH New York N. Y. Second Vice-president MRS. RICHARD LLEWELLYN LLOYD Great Neck, L. I'. N. Y. Third Vice-president MRS. PERCY E. BARBOUR New York N. Y. Fourth Vice-president MRS. E. P. MATHEWSON Tucson Ariz.

Jan 1, 1937

By AIME AIME

I would like to ask Bob Merrill whether he considers that horizontal concave curvature of a slope has any stabilizing effect, such as Jenike 1 suggested several years ago. The stabilizing effect is due to the restraint offered to radial movement by the curvature. We found in laboratory tests that if we constrained the rock with the same stresses as those measured in the pit then it would sustain a maximum stress about two or four times greater than when the same rock type was unconstrained. We are therefore definitely of the opinion that a constrained situation in a slope is favorable towards stability.

Jan 1, 1967

By S. F. Shaw

MINING conditions in Mexico during the current year have been most unfavorable, synchronizing with conditions in the United States, but the outlook for the near future is improving. The chief difficulties met with are because of the following conditions: severe drop in prices of metals; high smelting rates; high prices of supplies; inadequate means of transportation; low efficiency of labor. In comparison with pre-war prices for metals it cannot be said that prices are low, particularly for silver, which recently has gone to a level that would have been considered exceedingly good in 1912. But conditions have changed so greatly that only the most favorably situated properties can operate without loss.

Jan 1, 1921

By T. Imaizumi

Covering the whole scope of the MMIJ activities, i.e. geology and exploration, mining, mineral processing, and metallurgy, the technical innovations and improvements since 1972 were reviewed. Special references were made to the MMIJ Research Committees which were subsidized by the Japan Mining Promotive Foundation, in connection with those activities.

Jan 1, 1976

By Joseph W. Roe, L. L. HEWES

A GRAPHIC solution of Kutter's formula for the flow of water has been worked out By Dr. L. I. Helves in connection with his course in Graphic Computations, given in the Sheffieild Scientific School, Yale University, which may be of interest to those who deal with canals, flumes and streams.

May 1, 1909

By AIME AIME

ON Thursday, Oct. 9, oil men from far and wide gathered at Beaumont, Texas to participate in a three-day celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the completion of the famous Lucas gusher well at Spindletop field just south of Beaumont, and to pay tribute to Anthony F. Lucas, for whom the Lucas Medal of the A.I.M.E. is named. In the afternoon the gathered host drove to the site of the discovery well to dedicate a 58-ft. granite monu¬ment erected on the spot where the original derrick stood. Representatives of the A.I.M.E. took a prominent part in the dedication ceremonies, giving the two principal addresses of the afternoon's program. Everette DeGolyer, past President, paid a personal tribute to Capt. Lucas, as a pioneer producer, an engineer, and a friend and well wisher of all young engineers. He gave a splendid picture of the useful and full life of Capt. Lucas who always took a great interest in the activities of the Petroleum Division of the Institute, from its inception to the time of his death.

Jan 1, 1941

By Eugene N. Cameron

Pegmatites occur in abundance in certain areas of South West Africa and in adjacent parts of northern Cape Province in the Union of South Africa. Some of the pegmatite deposits were prospected before World War I, and intermittent mining was done during the period between the two World Wars. The deposits of the Jooste lithium mines became an important source of lepidolite, and beryl, columbite-tantalite, wolframite, and other minerals were produced. Since World War I1 prospecting and mining have been carried on vigorously, with the result that South West Africa produced nearly 3000 tons of beryl during 1949 through 1953, together with more than 40,000 tons of lithium minerals, chiefly lepidolite and petalite. Small amounts of tantalite, columbite, and other minerals have also been produced during the postwar period. Most of this mineral production has come from two pegmatite areas roughly outlined in Fig. 1. One is the Karibib-Omaruru area of north central South West Africa. The second is the northeastern part of the Orange River pegmatite area, which extends into adjacent parts of Namaqualand, in northern Cape Province of the Union of South Africa

Sep 1, 1955

By AIME AIME

The following persons have been proposed for election as members or associates of the Institute during March and April, 1908. Their names are published for the information of members and associates, from whom the Committee on Membership earnestly invites confidential communications, favorable or unfavorable, concerning these candidates. A sufficient period (varying in the discretion of the Committee, according to the residence of the candidate) will be allowed for the reception of such communications, before any action upon these names by the Committee. After the lapse of this period, the Committee will recommend action by the Council, which has the power of final election.

Jan 5, 1908

By Zay Jeffries

HOSTILITIES in Europe, Asia, and northern Africa were responsible for dislocations in rare-metal supplies during 1940. Although the consumption of some of the rare metals is small the dislocations may be relatively large. In some cases these are advantageous to North America and in others they are disadvantageous. Specific instances will be cited later. Barium T HIN films of barium metal on special steel balls greatly improve the life and reduce the friction of rotating anodes in highly evacuated small X-ray tubes and make possible the operation of these anodes at relatively high temperatures. These remarkable results are described in an article by Atlee, Wilson, and Filmer in the Journal of Applied Physics for September, 1940. Oil could not be used because of the high temperatures on the one hand and its volatility on the other. Fig. 3 shows diagramatically the rotating anode and the method of coating the steel balls with barium. The letters K.I.C. refer to "Kemet Iron Clad." The K.I.C. wire was mounted so that the barium could be evaporated by direct passage of the electric current. At high temperatures the barium dif-

Jan 1, 1941