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Re: Composition of Stainless appliances.

Be careful here folks. 'Stainless Steel' is NOT a 'well defined'
composition. There are MANY different formulations of 'stainless'.
Some of which ARE ferromagnetic, some are NOT. In grad school we
would go looking through the shop's stockroom with a small magnet in
order to separate the one from the other. There are designations for
some of these alloys (404 stainless comes to mind, but it WAS 25
years ago!) that let us sort them out. I THINK that some 'stainless
steel' doesn't contain iron at all! (?).

At 20:31 05/06/99 -0600, Ken Fox wrote:
>There are new appliances in my neighbors kitchen with stainless front.
>Very classy. However they no longer have refrigerator art gallery as
>magnets do not stick. Is there no soft iron in stainless fronts of these
>new appliances? I am confused and hope you can guide me.
>

I rediscovered the fact that stainless steel is not ferromagnetic a few
years ago when visiting Trieste synchrotron with a physics class. We were
looking at the beam tube passing between the poles of very expensive
magnets, when we were told that the tube was made of stainless steel
("inox" in Italian - a good word).

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britton@odie.ncssm.edu you have forgotten everything
North Carolina School of Science & Math you learned in school.
(919) 286-3366 x224 Albert Einstein, 1936