12-11-2005, 06:40 PM
Quote:Sorry I'm not getting the obvious, since I'm not a chemist or a metalurgist - What was happening to LandRovers? Were they crumbling because of the reaction of the composite metal?
Do pay attention, there at the back! LandRovers (the original ones, now aka Defenders) were made with a Duralumin body (thanks to an excess of it post-war in Britain, and Rover's desire to ape the Jeep) and a steel chassis. Where steel meets duralumin, corrosion occurs under the right circumstances (dampness, impurities, because of an electrolytic rection: there is a potential difference between the two metals and it has become a battery, just like lorica seg). There is a potential difference between any two different metals, some more than others, but you'll need a chemist or physicist to explain it in detail; I'm only an archaeologist who has to live with the consequences. These days they stick crummy plastic washers between the two metals but these don't last long and heavy salting of the roads in winter leads to white powder syndrome as your bodywork heads to oblivion... All bimetallic armour (helmets, body armour, armguards) would have been subjected to the same corrosive effects, especially where the two metals could not be separated and cleaned.
Quote:Is there evidence of [Romans] using electroplating? Is it a possible technique they may have had to obtain certain properties in metals?
- rememeber I don't have much knowlegde in metal stuff, so go easy.
No evidence for the Romans doing so. These early 'batteries' are not found in a Roman context and the fact that the Romans continued to build bimetallic stuff as structurally flawed as lorica seg suggests they did not understand the process.
Mike Bishop
