The President Writes … “The RUST project”

• What are the most important issues in corrosion today?
• How does corrosion impact upon society?
• What lessons can we learn?
• What can we teach the new generation?
• What’s the point anyway – everyone knows that corrosion is boring!

Well, I’m not sure that if I know the answer to any of these crucial questions any better than anyone else. But I do know that unless we, both as individuals and as The Institute of Corrosion, encourage, educate and inform a younger generation of scientists and engineers, then there will be fewer and fewer corrosionists in the future. Educationalists tell us that the younger the age where an imagination can be fired, the longer it sticks in the mind and the kinder the view of it. So I am proud that the Institute, along with other stakeholders (i.e. IOM3, National Corrosion Service - NCS, etc.) is supporting a new initiative on corrosion teaching in schools at years 10 to 12 (Key Stages 3 & 4).

I have to declare an interest here as the Principal Investigator of this programme, funded by the Engineering and Science Research Council (EPSRC), with the involvement of colleagues elsewhere in the UK. In particular, Mike Robinson at Cranfield University, Bill Nimmo/Paul McIntyre at the NCS, and Martin Carr at Oxford University have prominent input all aided by our project manager Ali-Marie McAllister. The overall vision of the EPSRC is to help deliver components of the National Curriculum by provision of high-quality packages of materials and by training or helping teachers in this delivery. Luckily, the National Curriculum does contain elements of corrosion. Thus, at year 9/10, students are expected to know that oxygen is required for corrosion (metal tarnishing) and that different metals have different potentials (reactivity series of the metals).

We are intending to use these two curriculum elements in science and, by utilising relevant elements of corrosion, to teach other national curriculum components. For example, concepts in electricity can be taught within the context of electrochemical corrosion (anodes and cathodes) and conserving resources can be taught in the context of corrosion protection (paint, cathodic protection etc.)

The project is called: “From the Wee Bang to the Big Crunch – Bursting Boilers, Sinking Ships and the Potential That Stops Corrosion”. As you can see we are hoping to get the interest up by starting from the context of explosions and disasters that result from corrosion or corrosion-related processes. We are also intending to develop material for older school students where they undertake an experiment that can be carried out simply and accurately in schools and where we can collate all the results centrally on a website. The working title for this is the “Really Useful Stress Test” (hence RUST). We propose loading a wire to just below breaking point in various environments, maybe with added CP. Thus, the time to failure depends upon the environment and protection potential applied. The project will, we hope, provide some of the excitement for genuine scientific and engineering enquiry.

We recently tested this idea out during Schools Science Week where we gave a lecture showing the (explosive or destructive) consequences of not thinking about corrosion. It went down quite well, with cries of “more explosions please”. So, maybe we are on the right track!

The reason I am introducing this project is partly because it is just the sort of thing that the Institute needs to be involved with to secure its long-term future. Thus, although outreach to 14 year olds may not appear to be of high priority right now, I would say that with membership at a relatively low level, it is almost a greater priority. Anyway, I hope you can agree that this is a good thing for the Institute to place its “Imprimatur” especially since it costs us nothing.

We have now reached the stage where we are looking for material to trial and, indeed, for contacts in schools that we can approach. Thus, the second reason for introducing the project to you is that we would welcome any suggestions, any ideas, any direct offers of help or materials. Also, we would be very pleased to receive contacts in schools that potentially may be interested in helping us.

Well, this has probably been a somewhat different “President Writes” than the norm but I hope you found our plans interesting and thought provoking. Maybe you can offer us help in some way or maybe you have better ideas – either way we would welcome your input.

Stuart Lyon
corrosion@manchester.ac.uk