Single Crystals of Aluminium and other Metals

Abstract

WITH reference to Prof. Porter's letter in NATURE of March 17, p. 362, the accompanying photographs (Figs. 1 and 2) may be of interest. They illustrate at a magnification of 100 diameters the type of fracture obtained when a drawn tungsten wire consisting of a single crystal is broken in tension. The fracture is always of the wedge type, the wire being very greatly reduced in diameter in one plane while it suffers no appreciable reduction in the plane at right angles. The photographs show the same specimen after fracture taken from two planes at right angles. The diameter of the wire was 0.05 mm.