How To Tell If It's Really Titanium

With the growing popularity of titanium, some disreputable merchandisers are passing off other materials as the more expensive metal. Popular Science looks at a surefire way to prove what that credit card/crowbar/ring is really made of. "Hold any genuine titanium metal object to a grinding wheel (even a little grindstone on a Dremel tool will do), and it gives off a shower of brilliant white sparks unlike any softer common metal. The sparks are tiny pieces of cut titanium--the friction of the grinder heats them till they burn white-hot. Hold a grindstone to the shackle of a "titanium" padlock from Master Lock, however, and you'll instead see the telltale fine, long, yellow sparks of high-carbon steel."

Comments

is there a better way?

[pwizard2]

The method in TFA sounds like it would really scratch up whatever you're trying to test. Is there a way to run a test without damaging the object?

Re:a magnet?

[budgenator]

Iron isn't always magnetic, when heated to or above it's normalization temperature it loses it's magnetic properties, you can hold a piece of steel suspended with an electrimagnet in a kiln and heat it, when it reaches it's normalization temp it will fall to the kiln floor.