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XIV.—ON THE EFFECT OF COLD UPON THE STRENGTH 
OF IRON, sy EDWARD L. MOSS, u.p., Srarr-Surcron, R.N. 
[Read June 17th, 1878.] 
Ir is said that iron becomes brittle in extreme cold. In support 
of this popular belief it is customary to appeal to the general 
experience of engineers, iron-founders and others practically 
conversant with the properties of iron. It has received further 
countenance from the statements of those who have had the fullest 
opportunities of making observations in extreme low temperature ; 
Dr. Kane says “in this intense cold iron snaps like glass,”* Sir 
Edward Belcher reports that his shovels and picks were easily 
broken in cold weather, and attributes the bursting of a fowling- 
piece to the temperature.t And Lieutenant Payer tells us that 
the hammers of his guns became brittle and snapped off; and his 
table knives grew so fragile in the cold that they broke in attempt- 
ing to cut frozen cheese.{ In the winter of 1870 certain disas- 
terous railway accidents, in which the breaking of the tires was 
attributed to sharp frost, drew public attention to this alleged 
action of cold, and in the following January Mr. William 
Brockbank communicated a paper on the subject to the Manchester 
Literary and Philosophie Society. He concluded from his 
experiments that in low temperatures iron became brittle under 
sudden impact. But at the same time he records a number of 
experiments in which the strength of the iron tested by both 
tension and torsion was found to be unchanged or increased. His 
paper was followed by one from Sir William Fairbairn, embodying 
the results of many experiments between zero, Fah., and red heat, 
indicating that the resistance to a tensile strain was at least as 
great at zero as at 60.° 
The next contribution was from Dr. J. P. Joule, who detailed 
experiments by both tension and impact, and summed up with 
the decisicn that “frost does not make cast or wrought iron brittle.” 
* Kane’s Grinnell Expedition, vol. 2, p. 20. 
+ Belcher’s Last of the Arctic Voyages, vol. 1, p. 225, and vol. 2, p. 182. 
+ Austrian Arctic Voyage, 1872-74, vol. 1, p. 210, vol. 2, p. 23. 
§ Proceedings Manchester Literary and Philosophie Society, vol. x. p. 77, e¢ seq. 
