Showing posts with label Gold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gold. Show all posts

Friday, October 9, 2015

What were the Egyptian pyramids built for?

The Egyptian pyramids were built as tombs for ancient Egyptian kings.  Perhaps the first thing you would look for if you visited the United Arab Republic would be the ancient Egyptian pyramids near the Nile river.  

Each pyramid was build as a tomb to protect the body of an Egyptian king.  The Egyptian thought that a man’s body had to be protected and preserved so his soul could live forever.
When a king died, the people “mummified” (dried and wrapped) his body and buried it in a secret chamber deep inside an enormous pyramid, built of stone blocks to last a long time.  

It was built large to tell the world how great the king was.  Many treasures of gold and precious objects were buried with the king so that his spirit could enjoy them. Food and other necessities wee also put in the pyramid for the king in his future life.  

After the king’s mummy was placed in the pyramid, the inner passages were blocked. It took millions of stones to build a big pyramid.  Many of the blocks weighed more than a ton apiece.  A big pyramid meant the work of thousands of slaves for many years. – Dick Rogers

Thursday, December 20, 2012

What is brass made of?


Brass
Brass is a yellowish metal made by melting copper and zinc together.  Brass is hard and strong and holds a bright finish. Many of the metal things we use today are made of brass.

Brass is a long wearing, yellowish-colored metal that is used in making such familiar things as brass doorknobs, pins and brass musical instruments.  It has a great many other important uses as well.

But no one has ever heard of brass mines.  That’s because there are not any.  Brass is not a single metal, as is gold or iron.  It is a mixture of two metals – copper and zinc.  A mixture of this kind is called an alloy.

In making brass, the copper is melted in an electric furnace.  Small pieces of solid zinc are then added to the melted copper.  The zinc dissolves in the motion copper in much the same way salt may be dissolved in water.

When the mixture cools, it hardens into a metal that is much stronger and tougher than pure copper, and therefore resists wear better.  Brass can be polished to a bright finish.-Dick Rogers