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CHAPTER 1
Carbon
BASIC raw materials are a vital factor in the modern industrial world. This is often called 'The Age of Steel," but there are other materials on which the advantages and conveniences of modern life are equally dependent. Rubber, glass, textiles, copper, and many other basic materials can be named as essential to our present mode of life. Among these is carbon, which plays an humble but most important role. Without carbon, the wheels of many industries would cease to turn; the manufacture of aluminum, steel, and many important alloys would be seriously handicapped; the generation of electric power on the present huge scale would be impossible, and our greatest agency for education and entertainment, the motion picture industry, would come to an end.
Carbon is an element which is found in abundance in all parts of the world since it is a constituent of all organic materials. The purest form of carbon is the diamond. Other well known forms of essentially pure carbon are graphite, lampblack, charcoal and coke. The latter forms, however, usually contain some mineral or volatile impurities. Coal contains a very high percentage of carbon as well as a variety of tarry hydrocarbons from which the numerous coal-tar products are derived.
The peculiar physical and chemical characteristics of carbon adapt it to many uses for which no other material is available. It has also been found better adapted to many applications than materials formerly used.
From a chemical standpoint carbon is very inactive, resisting the effects of most acids and other corrosive chemicals. At incandescent temperatures it does not melt and the rate of oxidation is relatively