[HN Gopher] Digression 3: Corrosion - Rust Never Sleeps
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       Digression 3: Corrosion - Rust Never Sleeps
        
       Author : prismatic
       Score  : 82 points
       Date   : 2023-09-22 19:05 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (books.worksinprogress.co)
 (TXT) w3m dump (books.worksinprogress.co)
        
       | zzbn00 wrote:
       | Very nicely written article.
       | 
       | One thing about rust, salt and moisture: salts deliquescence.
       | I.e. they absorb moisture from air until there is enough liquid
       | to dissolve themselves in. This happens below 100% relative
       | humidity (around 75% for common salt, but as little as 31% for
       | cacl2). So salt-contaminated surfaces can easily get wet even
       | when the air is not that humid, bad news for steel!
        
       | agumonkey wrote:
       | Great article. Cross roads between old, daily life, technical.
        
       | zem wrote:
       | this side note leapt out at me
       | 
       | 8<--------------------------------------------
       | 
       | The ongoing maintenance budget for the statue these days, I'm
       | told, is about $6 million a year--$5 million for managing public
       | access, $1 million for physical maintenance. And any year the $1
       | million is not entirely spent, the remainder is banked so that
       | the fund will become sufficient over time to pay for a major
       | overhaul.
       | 
       | 8<--------------------------------------------
       | 
       | what a refreshing change from the whole "use it or lose it"
       | mentality!
        
       | carapace wrote:
       | > The [galvanized corrugated steel] sheets don't just have value;
       | they _are_ value. With two sheets you can buy a goat, with twenty
       | an Ankole cow.
       | 
       | Giordano Bruno said that whatever has the most value and the
       | least cost of storage _becomes_ money. This seems like an
       | example? Amusingly, the  "coins" store themselves as they are
       | literally the roofs protecting other valuables-- and people!
       | --from the elements.
        
         | iancmceachern wrote:
         | Also makes sense why gold is used traditionally as a storage of
         | value, it doesn't tarnish or rust away with age
        
         | zem wrote:
         | i think that that needs an addendum along the lines of "as long
         | as it's not necessary and/or consumable", otherwise you have to
         | decide between using it as a medium of exchange and just using
         | it.
         | 
         | even in this case, the only way you could really "spend" the
         | sheets is by removing the roof and walls of your house, so
         | until you have some extra, unneeded ones, they aren't really
         | money. they're more a store of value; an analogue might be
         | buying artwork that you know you could sell later if you needed
         | the money.
        
           | philsnow wrote:
           | "I declare the Mountain besieged.  [...]        We will bear
           | no weapons against you, but we leave you to your gold.
           | You may eat that, if you will!"
           | 
           | -- The Hobbit, Chapter 15, The Gathering of the Clouds
        
       | fovc wrote:
       | Struggled a bit to find this, but here's a link to the other
       | chapters already written: https://books.worksinprogress.co/
       | 
       | Does anyone know if there's an RSS feed?
        
         | nickswhitaker wrote:
         | We send out notifications via our Substack here
         | https://www.worksinprogress.news/
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | dang wrote:
       | [stub for sweeping offtopicness under the rug]
        
         | nu11ptr wrote:
         | The weird thing about being an uber geek: You see this headline
         | and assume the article is about a popular programming language!
        
           | tekla wrote:
           | A true uber geek would see Corrosion and Rust and think its
           | an article about Oxidation, because it makes sense.
        
             | Sharlin wrote:
             | In case you referred to the chemical reaction, "Oxidation"
             | is also the name of the project to integrate Rust in
             | Firefox,[1] and in general is semifrequently used to mean
             | the process of rewriting legacy code bases in Rust and thus
             | "oxidizing" them.
             | 
             | [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation
             | 
             | (Nb. _originally_ Rust was named after the order of
             | parasitic fungi _Pucciniales_.)
        
               | nayuki wrote:
               | In turn, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(fungus)
               | 
               | > Rusts get their name because they are most commonly
               | observed as deposits of powdery rust-coloured or brown
               | spores on plant surfaces.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | pornel wrote:
           | [flagged]
        
           | howtofly wrote:
           | And we have a project named Corrosion:
           | https://github.com/corrosion-rs/corrosion
        
           | tempaccount420 wrote:
           | They should probably change the name of the compound to
           | prevent confusion.
        
         | dpc_01234 wrote:
         | It's seems like nature is rewriting it in Rust all the time .
        
         | tux3 wrote:
         | "We want to make rust just go away, and it just won't. So we
         | negotiate."
         | 
         | Poetic words. Not to be taken out of context, of course.
        
           | MereInterest wrote:
           | As the article states, corrosive environments cause an
           | acceleration of rust development, and salt water is often a
           | leading cause. Therefore, if you want to prevent rust, you
           | must avoid C.
        
           | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2023-09-23 23:01 UTC)