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

What is cement made of?

People often misuse the words cement and concrete.  For example a “cement sidewalk” is really made of concrete.

Cement is the fine, gray powder that is mixed with water, sand and crushed rock or gravel to make concrete.  The cement and water from a paste that hardens as it dries, and binds the sand and gravel together into the hard, rock-like mass we use in building tail skyscrapers, smooth sidewalks and large bridges and dams.

Cement

Cement is made from lime and other materials, such as silica, alumina, iron and gypsum.   The lime used to make cement comes mainly from a rock called limestone.

Cement is made by burning crushed limestone with the other materials.  The heat changes the mixture into a new material called “clinkers.”  The clinkers are then finely ground into the gray, powdery cement.  After this, it is ready for use in masking concrete.

Before the concrete is mixed, workmen must measure the proper amounts of sand, gravel and water with the cement to give it the proper strength.  When first mixed, the wet concrete, called a “batch,” can be poured into molds of almost any shape.  It quickly hardens into a solid mass as hard as natural stone. – Dick Rogers

Take a bite of chestnuts

Popular holiday foods include chestnuts. For one, they are no longer seasonal in the Philippines. It is common to find chestnuts being roasted in some shopping malls and supermarkets.

Chestnuts are full of beneficial nutrients like vitamins (A, B1, B2, Niacin, C), minerals (calcium, iron, phosphorus), fats, and protein. Unlike other nuts, it is low in fat and has a high starch content. It is usually eaten boiled or roasted or sometimes added to soups or used as stuffing.

Worldwide, there are around 100 varieties of chestnuts; the variety that produces single large nuts is thought to be more flavorful and better for cooking. This variety is called marrons in France.
A variety called horse chestnut is now becoming popular in the market as a food supplement. This is said to be rich in flavones which some modern research has shown to help support the normal integrity of the vascular system and connective tissue.

Flavones are flavonoids; a few thousand different flavonoids have so far been identified. Many of these serve as antioxidants or play important roles in maintaining the health of the body; nearly all flavonoids enhance the functionality of vitamin C. Flavonoids are sometimes redundantly called bioflavonoids.

As a class of compounds, flavonoids have been referred to as nature’s biological response modifiers because of their ability to modify the body’s reaction to other compounds such as allergens, viruses, and carcinogenic properties. This is because flavonoids possess anti-oxidant and free radical-scavenging activity. Certain studies have indicated that consumption of these compounds is associated with reduced risk of cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

So if you want to get all these health benefits from your chestnuts, you can now start cracking your roasted chestnuts and eat them plainly. Or if you prefer, here is a sample recipe: