Abstract
THE effect known as the Widmanstatten structure is shown most clearly in those meteoric nickel-iron alloys in which the percentage of nickel lies between certain limits, roughly, from 7 to 14. When the percentage of nickel is less than about 6.5, there is no Widmanstatten structure-the single component is known as ‘kamacite’. With higher percentages of nickel, there is always an additional component-known as ‘taenite’. Attempts to find its percentage composition by chemical methods led to very different results, ranging from about 25 to 37-although in one isolated case a percentage of about 47.8 was recorded. These widely varying results are due to the difficulty of isolating the taenite from the kamacite with which it is so intimately mixed and indeed often encloses. It was for this reason that it occurred to one of us to attempt to determine the composition of the taenite in situ by means of ‘thermo-magnetic’ analysis (Phil. Trans., A, 1908).
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Smith, S., Young, J. The Widmanstätten Structure of Octahedral Meteoric Iron. Nature 143, 384–385 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/143384a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/143384a0
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