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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."
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?
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
Think the store will mind if I bring a dremel with grinding wheel to the store with me? For testing purposes of course...
A Human Right
Wtf is with these fake links? Do you get money or something for that stupid city?
Apparently my wife's jewelry was all genuine titanium!
The author of this Popular Science article, Theo Gray, also recently relaunched http://www.periodictable.com/ Thousands of elemental pictures and videos are available there, all linked in with his Popular Science series.
It still works for electronics though! (you'll prove something is dense)
lol: You see no door there!
Man, I just tried this with a new package of Energizer Tianium, and the spray burned a hole through my skin!
You can be sure I'll be returning these "titanium" batteries just as soon as I'm back from Emergency!
a: Titanium is not ferromagnetic, and hence it is not attracted by magnets as strongly as iron is ( the difference in force should be orders of magnitude ).
b: Titanium's density is 4.5g/cm^3 , iron is 7.8g/cm^3
c: Titanium is corrosion resistant to dillute sulfuric and hydrochloric acid, iron is not.
Next up: Test if your explosives have gone bad by detonating them.
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Apparently, Google has "interesting" sense of humor regarding titanium products.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...iron is always magnetic.
That is a big fallacy. There are some alloys in which iron is around 98-99% which are non-magnetic (think unusual alloying elements like niobium and rhenium).
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
About 18 years ago, I was on an underwater oil-drilling rig, when the mission we were "tasked" to perform by the navy went horribly wrong, and the rig started taking on water. I was running frantically running through cold freezing water towards a closing hydraulic door. I didn't make it in time, but I stuck my hand in the opening, and the door was stopped by my titanium wedding band. A colleague had found me, cut the hydraulic power to the door, and saved me. Earlier I had almost flushed it down the toilet. Good thing I didn't.
Couple hours later I met some aliens.
(Yeah, I know, but it sounds better in 1st person.)
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
Its not too hard, you can try it from the comfort of your tub with a toaster.
lol: You see no door there!
And yes, I am a loudspeaker engineer... ;)
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
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Depends on the type of stainless. Austentitic is not ferromagnetic, while martensitic is.
And in fact, some soldering iron thermostats use this property. When the iron is cold, a magnet pulls the contact closed. Once it heats above the Curie point, the magnet lets go and the contact breaks.
someone please tell me how to tell if there's real platinum in my Capital One® platinum Card, I always want to know.
Shitcock
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Sorry, that's not my understanding of the metal's properties. I guess for digging around in the sand, you don't really need a fine edge, but nothing to my knowledge compares to the ability of steel (esp. high-carbon steel) to hold an edge. High-carbon steel is very brittle, which helps it to hold an extremely sharp edge; this is why Japanese samurai swords were forged to have one side harder than the other side, so the sharp side would be extremely hard, but the other side would be less hard and more strong (done by using clay on one side during quenching) so that the blade as a whole wouldn't break easily.
There's a reason no other knives are made of titanium, or anything besides steel for that matter.
Titanium is known to be a very strong metal. If you know anything about metallurgy and its terminology, strong and hard are different properties, and usually work against each other: a metal is usually strong, but not hard, or vice versa, not both. Steel can be made to be hard, but brittle, or strong (which is more flexible) but not very hard.
Anyone with a titanium ring knows that it's not a hard metal at all: it's easily scratched unless it has a protective coating (usually diamond). Sure, it might prevent a automatic pressure door on an undersea rig from locking you in, but it doesn't hold a sharp edge at all.