A blacksmith wishes to cool his hot piece of steel as rapidly as possible. He has a bucket of ice-water and a bucket of oil (at room temperature). Which bucket should he dump his steel into?

Vinodhan explains this very well. This is something that is already well known by metalworkers. When your cool steel quickly it will become case hardened. I remember this from a course in manufacturing processes. The reason it won't burst into flames is because the flash point deals with the vapor, the temperature to ingite a liquid or solid is the ingition point.

Posted by John on 2003-12-23 23:38:45