Abstract

THE discourse by Sir Harold Carpenter which we publish to-day as a special supplement provides a very complete survey of the important results which have been obtained by the study of single crystals of metals. Whilst ordinary metals consist of a large number of crystals with their axes directed more or less at random, means have been devised for producing specimens, large enough for the tests usually applied by the engineer to metallic specimens, but consisting of a single individual. An extensive field has thus been opened up for the study of the properties of solids. The use of single crystals eliminates one very obscure factor, the existence of boundaries of unknown properties between the crystals, and also, by limiting the directions in which slip can occur under the influence of stress, greatly simplifies the geometrical conditions of a mechanical test. The study of the electrical, and especially of the magnetic, properties is correspondingly simplified. It becomes possible to compare the properties of metals with those of ionic crystals, such as rock salt, which have so far proved most amenable to theoretical treatment. The work on metallic single crystals is thus certain to throw much light on a problem of the greatest interest to the engineer as well as to the physicist that of the cohesion of solids.

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