by Many modern devices – from mobile phones and computers to electric vehicles and wind turbines – rely on strong magnets from a kind of minerals that are called rare earths. Since the systems and infrastructure used in everyday life have become digital and the United States were moved towards renewable energies, access to these minerals has become critical – and the markets for these elements have grown rapidly.
Modern society now uses rare earth magnets in everything, from national defense, in which magnetic -based systems are of essential importance to rocket instructions and aircraft, to the clean energy transfer that depends on wind turbines and electric vehicles.
The rapid growth of trade with rare earth metal and its effects on society are not the only case study of this kind. In the course of history, materials have shaped the trajectory of human civilization quietly. They form the tools that people use, the buildings in which they live, the devices that impart their relationships, and the systems that structure the economies. Newly discovered materials can trigger ripple effects that form the industry, change geopolitical balances and change the daily habits of people.
Materials science is the examination of the nuclear structure, the properties, the processing and the performance of materials. In many ways, materials science is a discipline of immense social consequences.
As a material scientist, I am interested in what can happen when new materials are available. Glass, steel and rare magnets are examples of how innovation in materials science technological changes and, as a result, global economies that have shaped politics and the environment.
How innovation shapes society: pressure from social and political interests (orange arrows) actively create new materials and technologies that enable such materials (center). The Ripple effects resulting from people who use these technologies change the entire tissue of society (blue arrows). Peter Mullner
Glass lenses and the scientific revolution
In the early 13th century, after the dismissal of Constantinople, some excellent Byzantine glassmakers left their houses to settle down in Venice – at that time a powerful economic and political center. The local nobility welcomed the beautiful goods of the glassmakers. However, in order to prevent the glass stoves from causing fires, the nobles banished the glassmakers – under the punishment of death – to the island of Murano.
Murano became the center for glass craftsmanship. In the 15th century, the glassmaker Angelo Barovier experimented with the addition of the ashes from burned plants, which contained a chemical substance called Kali to the glass.
The potash reduced the melting temperature and made liquid glass more fluid. It also eliminated blisters in the glass and improved the optical clarity. This transparent glass was later used in magnifying lenses and glasses.
Johannes Gutenberg’s printing machine, which was completed in 1455, made the reading more accessible to people across Europe. It was a need for reading glasses that became popular with scientists, dealers and spiritual-be-gene that spectacle manufacturers became an established profession.
Up to the early 17th century, glass lenses developed into composed optical devices. Galileo Galilei focused on heavenly bodies, while Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovered microbial life with a microscope.
Lentil -based instruments were transformative. Telescopes have redefined long -term cosmological views. Microscopes have opened completely new fields in biology and medicine.
These changes marked the dawn of empirical science, where observation and measurement drove the creation of knowledge. Today the James Webb World Commercial Telescope and Vera C. Rubin Observatory continue these early telescopes of knowledge creation.
Steel and rich
In the late 18th and 19th centuries, the industrial revolution created the demand for stronger, more reliable materials for machines, railways, ships and infrastructure. The material that occurs was steel, which is strong, durable and cheap. Steel is a mixture of mostly iron with small amounts of carbon and other elements.
Countries with large -scale steel production once had oversized economic and political power and influence geopolitical decisions. For example, the British Parliament wanted to prevent the colonies from exporting the Iron Act from 1750 finished steel. They wanted the colonies to be used as a supply for their steel industry in England.
Benjamin Huntsman invented a melting process with 3 feet high ceramic vessels, called crubles in the 18th century. Huntsman’s crucial process produced higher -quality steel for tools and weapons.
A hundred years later, Henry Bessemer developed the oxygen -bluged steel manufacturing process, which drastically increased the production speed and lowered the costs. In the United States, numbers like Andrew Carnegie have created a huge industry based on Bessemer’s process.
The widespread availability of steel converted the structure, travel and defense of the companies. Steel skyscrapers and transit systems made it possible for the cities to enable steel -built battleships and tanks military, and cars that contained steel have become book clips in consumer life.
Control over steel resources and infrastructure made Stahl a basis for national power. China’s rise of the 21st century for steel dominance is a continuation of this pattern. From 1995 to 2015, China’s contribution to world steel production rose from around 10% to more than 50%. The white house reacted in 2018 with massive tariffs on Chinese steel.
Rare earth metals and global trade
At the beginning of the 21st century, the progress of digital technologies and the transition to an economy based on renewable energies led a demand for rare elements.
There are rare elements of 17 chemically very similar elements, including neodymium, dyprosium, samarium and others. They appear in nature in bundles and are the ingredients that make magnets super strong and useful. They are required for highly efficient electric motors, wind turbines and electronic devices.
Due to its chemical similarity, the separation and cleaning of rare elements includes complex and expensive processes.
China controls the majority of the global processing capacity of rare earth. Political tensions between countries, especially in terms of trade tariffs and strategic competition, can risk risk shortage or disorders in the supply chain.
The case of rare earth metals shows how a single material category of trade policy, industrial planning and even diplomatic alliances can shape.
The technological transformation begins with social pressure. New materials create opportunities for scientific and technical breakthroughs. As soon as a material proves to be useful, it is quickly integrated into the tissues of daily life and the wider systems. With every innovation, the material world reorganizes the social world subtly and defines what is possible, desirable and normal.
Understanding how companies react to new innovations in materials science can help today’s engineers and scientists to solve crises in sustainability and security. In a way, every technical decision is a cultural, and every material has a story that goes far beyond its molecular structure.
This article will be released from the conversation, a non -profit, independent news organization that brings you facts and trustworthy analyzes to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Peter Mullner, Boise State University
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The National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Energy, NASA and other national and regional agencies, have financed the former research by Peter Mullner.
