There was a fascinating program shown on a BBC channel recently called Metal: How it works. The program description is as follows:

Professor Mark Miodownik travels to Israel to trace the history of our love affair with gleaming, lustrous metal. He learns how we first extracted glinting copper from dull rock and used it to shape our world and reveals how our eternal quest for lighter, stronger metals led us to forge hard, sharp steel from malleable iron and to create complex alloys in order to conquer the skies.

What is especially interesting for us is the fact that Prof. Miodownik uses a Tinius Olsen tensile testing machine to demonstrate the mechanical properties of metals. In fact you can see the machine and a set of HW14 grips in the introductory picture.

He investigates metals at the atomic level to reveal mysterious properties such as why they get stronger when they are hit, and he discovers how metal crystals can be grown to survive inside one of our most extreme environments - the jet engine.

To see the program you will need the BBC iplayer, and unfortunately for most of us, the iplayer is only available to you if you are living in the UK. Here is the link to the show: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01fkc5n/hd/How_It_Works_Metal_How_It_Works/ . As with all educational BBC programs, they are quality programs and will, eventually, be seen around the world, so we hope it becomes available to you shortly.