Now THAT was a faceplant of a week... Jayzus Fokin Kee-reist... However, this morning I went to the huge community garage sale south of me at the seed warehouse on Peoria Road and there I bought a cast iron cross slide machining table for $35 which had once belonged to an old farm machinist guy out here who passed away two years ago. It cleaned up nicely and I will bolt it to the cast iron drill press in my garage- the very same drill press my Dad (who also passed away two years ago) bought new at Sears Roebuck in Hayward in 1958 and used in the Nielsen Wood Shop, 7675 Thornton Avenue, Newark CA (dial SYcamore 3-1543!) right up until he sold off the business and retired in 1983. The iron atoms from which the drill press and the cross slide table were fashioned is the ash left over in the core of a big star after it has fused off all its hydrogen into helium, and fused that into lithium, and fused that into beryllium, and fused that into carbon, and fused that into... and so on all the way up to iron, which is the point where fusion reactions stop producing energy. To build up elements heavier than iron by fusion, you instead have to add energy along with protons and neutrons, and that stored energy makes all elements heavier than iron radioactive to one degree or another- that is, they really want to spit out the extra protons and neutrons or other teeny little things like antineutrinos and gamma rays and electrons, and eventually go back to being iron. Once you get all the way up to uranium, the nucleus is so jam-packed with protons and neutrons that the whole thing barely holds together- and if you shoot it with just one lousy little neutron, the whole thing splits in two, plus a few loose neutrons, and releases all that pent-up energy and you get... Hiroshima. But iron is safe and secure. Iron is good and strong. Iron is easy to have out of the rocks that form the crust of this Earth, easy to melt into ingots and then beat into useful shapes like drill presses and cross slide tables, and beautiful shapes like 1964 Buick Rivieras and for that matter 1965 Cadillac/Miller-Meteor limousine-style funeral coaches. Iron is what makes your blood red and lets it carry oxygen to your brain so you can read things like this. Iron is what makes chlorophyll green and thereby enables things like avocados, arugula, artichokes, and asparagus. And its all those teeny little neutrons and protons deep down inside every iron atom that give it its mass, and as I hoisted up that greasy old cross slide table and lugged it over to my Pontiac Vibe this morning I once again thought about all those neutrons and protons, and the absolute stability of the iron nucleus, and how that stability guarantees that each time a spent star of sufficient size falls in on itself after its nuclear fires go out and then blows itself to smithereens, the ash left over will hang around essentially forever and eventually collect first into flecks and specks of iron and then later into hunks and chunks of iron and finally into moon-sized planet cores of iron surrounded by a thick, juicy, and delicious crust of less dense elements, from which things like Fender Stratocasters and bottles of bourbon can be fashioned (using tools made from, you guessed it, iron) if you have the time and inclination. Iron: what wonderful stuff. Thats Slim Volumes story for a Friday evening, and hes sticking to it.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 07:26:10 +0000
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