Dictionary of Metallurgy

Rating:
Summary: Accessible to practitioners and students of metallurgy
Review: The Dictionary of Metallurgy is a small volume, intended to provide concise, easy to find definitions of fundamental terms used in applied physical and engineering metallurgy. The book is meant to be accessible to practitioners and students of metallurgy as well as to non-technical readers, who may need more basic definitions. For example, the term "ablation" provides a simple definition and then compares the metallurgical usage with that in medicine and geology, making the meaning clear to readers from diverse backgrounds. Bold and italicized words within a definition are supposed to denote related words and cross-references to other definitions respectively. This usage is not consistent and is sometimes needlessly confusing. Bold words are explained briefly within the definition itself, but they do not always lead to a valid alphabetical entry with more information, although the preface leads you to believe they will. Italicized words do lead to a cross-referenced alphabetical entry, but you may need another step before you find a definition. For example "vacancy" is defined as "an unoccupied atomic site in a crystal lattice," but the entry for "crystal lattice" says "see crystal structure."

The dictionary is obviously written from a British perspective and this has several implications for American readers. British spellings are used (e.g., metre, vapour, sulphide), but these are usually close enough alphabetically to American spellings for the American reader to find them quickly. Other words, like gray and gauge, are cross-referenced to the British spelling and full definition. The British term "earth" is defined as the non-powered return of an electrical circuit, but there is no entry for the American term "ground." There is an extensive explanation of the UK standard terminology for engineering steels, but no mention of the AISI/SAE standard numerical designations of plain carbon alloy steels.