Self organising steel balls explain metal heat treatment

This is the first time (in 69 years and now 70) that I have ever understood something intuitively in metallurgy! Most discussions of metallurgy concepts tend to give information of various effects, but no real explanation. Thank you so much.

They need to show this in materials class. This is so accurate and intuitive.

This is by far the best explanation of mettalic plasticity that I have ever seen, very easy to understand and not bogged down by the other "side effects" because you avoid them in a careful and well thought out way. 10/10 Steve

As a student studying material science and mechanical engineering, this has to be my favortie video to date! That dislocation at 2:29 was incredible! Thanks for the fascinating content steve!

As a materials science teacher. I'm impressed by the level of clarity and accuracy of this video. Would totally make something similar for my class.

Hey Steve. I’m a metallurgist in the United States and I really appreciate the videos you’ve done on crystal structure and how it relates to metals and their properties. I may just share this vid with our team to help explain metallurgy to the non-metallurgists I work with. Thanks for sharing

As a self taught bladesmith, I really appreciate this kind of “hand on” demo. Thanks man.

When I served my Tool and Die apprenticeship, under my father, I learned about Space Lattice..Austenite and martensite. I have known and felt what you are demonstrating here for my entire 42 year career. I have heat treated, hardened, tempered, stress relieved and annealed and this is the first time I’ve seen what I know, demonstrated perfectly. Thank you so much. I’ve told my apprentices over the years that you have to think like a molecule in order to properly handle the machining of steels..

Materials was my favorite subject during my engineering degree. I was one of the weird ones who really enjoyed learning about crystalline structures and defects, and how to achieve the material properties you want in an alloy. I just find the subject fascinating.

1:51 My inner kid laughed a bit.

Hi Steve! I'm a grad student studying the transition of Opal A from diatoms all the way to quartz in the earths crust, which is to say to transition from amorphous silica to crystalline quartz. This is such an incredible description of that process that I actually showed your video to my advisor who then showed his class! I use X-ray defractometry (XRD) to determine the spacing between atoms based on the angle at which they defract x rays in order to identify the minerals in my samples. Since you love resonance and crystallization, I thought a video in which you break down how we can use x-ray defraction to determine crystal structure sounded like your bread and butter!

As a person whos interested in majoring in chemical, materials, or mechanical engineering i really love it when you cover materials science concepts

Eons ago, when I was still a young man, I worked as a heat treater. Who knew how many different types of steel there are? Some harden in oil, some in water, some even in air. It was quite a learning experience. I would never have guessed that the dew point inside the furnaces was an important factor in the successful hardening of steel, but it was one of many things we had to keep track of.

As a Metal fabricator/welder, I've sat through a lot of lessons on metallurgy. First time I've heard about dislocations and their implications. I'd like to thank you and your balls of steel, Mr Mould, for this moment of clarity.

As an engineer, this is one of if not the best explanation of this concept I've seen. So intuitive I'm going to make this a program at the science museum I work part time at

I’m a materials science major, and I always find myself coming back to this video and the last one to hear about crystal lattices and their properties. Everything is, to the best of my knowledge, quite precisely-worded and accurate without sacrificing the accessibility of the language or concepts. And those videos of the vibration causing the lattice to shift around? Phenomenal. What a beautiful visualization. Thanks for making this video! I owe the fact that I do what I’m doing right now partially to science communicators like you.

That's interesting. The liquid you poured from the beaker at the end turned into a gas after pouring and then quickly condensed back into a liquid again.

Degree qualified Materials Engineer here. This is brilliant. Well done explaining something simple that has profound impacts on metallic properties.

Oh my god, the first 2 seconds plus the title just explained the concept you're trying to communicate instantly, that's absolutely incredible

I'm working on a research paper on heat treatment and this was a pleasant surprise to watch.