The "blue pantries" of the oceans and seas store practically inexhaustible reserves of many chemical elements. Thus, one cubic meter of water in the World Ocean contains an average of about four kilograms of magnesium. In total, more than 6·10 16 tons of this element are dissolved in the waters of our planet.

To show how grandiose this value is, we give the following example. Since the beginning of the new chronology, mankind has lived only a little over 60 billion (ie 6 10 10) seconds. This means that if from the very first days of our era people began to extract magnesium from sea water, then in order to exhaust all the water reserves of this element by now, one would have to extract a million tons of magnesium every second!

As you can see, Neptune can be calm for his wealth.

How much nickel is on earth?

The earth's crust contains approximately 10 15 tons of nickel. Is it a lot? Is there enough nickel to, say, nickelize our entire planet (including the surface of the World Ocean)?

A simple calculation shows that not only will it be enough, but it will also remain for about ... 20 thousand of the same "balls".

Cast "kings"

Who does not know the masterpieces of foundry art located on the territory of the Moscow Kremlin: "Tsar Bell" and "Tsar Cannon". But about the other cast "kings" probably know a few.

More than a thousand years ago, a cast-iron "king-lion" was cast in China, about six meters high and weighing almost 100 tons. A cart with horses could pass between the legs of this huge statue.

One of the most ancient "ancestors" of the Moscow "Tsar Bell" is considered to be a Korean 48-ton bell, cast back in 770. Its sound is amazingly beautiful. According to legend, the daughter of the master, in order to save her father from numerous failures in the smelting of metal, threw herself into the molten metal, and her death cry froze in it.

A new exhibit has recently appeared in the Museum of the History of the Peoples of Uzbekistan - a huge cast-iron cauldron discovered during excavations of a burial mound near Tashkent. The diameter of this cauldron, cast by ancient craftsmen, is about one and a half meters, and its weight is half a ton. Apparently, the "king-cauldron" in ancient times served the whole army: from it it was possible to feed almost five thousand people at once.

A unique casting weighing 600 tons - a cast-iron chabot (base) for the most powerful hammer at that time - was made in Russia in 1875. To cast this giant shabot, a huge foundry was built at the Motovilikha plant in Perm. Twenty cupolas continuously melted the metal for 120 hours. The shabot cooled down for three months, then it was taken out of the mold and, with the help of only levers and blocks, moved to the location of the hammer.

Steel bridge - 200 years

In England there is the city of Ironbridge, which in translation into Russian means "Steel Bridge". The city owes its name to the steel bridge across the River Severn, which was built two hundred years ago. This bridge is the firstborn of the steel industry not only in England, but throughout the world. There are other sights of the British industry of the past in Ironbridge. The specialized museum contains many exhibits on the history of technology, demonstrating the successes of English metallurgy in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Long before the Pithecanthropes?

According to modern ideas, a person got acquainted with metals (copper, gold, iron) only a few millennia ago. And earlier on our planet for almost two million years, stone reigned supreme as the main material for the manufacture of tools and weapons.

However, historians sometimes come across amazing facts that (if only they are reliable!) indicate that our civilization may have had predecessors that reached a high level of material culture.

In the literature, for example, there is a message that supposedly in the 16th century, the Spaniards, who set foot on the lands of South America, found an iron nail about 20 centimeters long in the silver mines of Peru. This find would hardly have aroused interest if not for one circumstance: most of the nail was tightly cemented in a piece of rock, which could mean that it had lain in the bowels of the earth for many tens of millennia. At one time, an unusual nail was supposedly kept in the office of the viceroy of Peru, Francisco de Toledo, who usually showed it to his guests.

Mentions are also made of other similar finds. So, in Australia, an iron meteorite with traces of processing was discovered in coal seams dating back to the Tertiary period. But who processed it in the Tertiary period, remote from our time by tens of millions of years? After all, even such ancient fossil ancestors of man as Pithecanthropes lived much later - only some 500 thousand years ago.

About a metal object found in the thickness of coal in the mines of Scotland, the journal "Messages of the Scottish Society for Ancient History" wrote. Another similar find also has a "miner's" origin: we are talking about a gold chain, allegedly discovered in 1891 in the coal seams. Only nature itself is capable of "immuring" it into a piece of coal, and this could happen in those distant times when coal was being formed.

Where are they, these items - a nail, a meteorite, a chain? After all, modern methods of analyzing materials would allow at least to some extent shed light on their nature and age, and therefore reveal their secret.

Unfortunately, no one knows this today. And were they really?

Standard alloy

On July 14, 1789, the rebellious people of France stormed the Bastille - the Great French Revolution began. Along with many decrees and resolutions of a political, social, economic nature, the revolutionary government decided to introduce a clear metric system of measures. At the suggestion of the commission, which included authoritative scientists, as a unit of length - a meter - one ten-millionth part of a quarter of the length of the Paris geographic meridian was adopted. For five years, the leading French experts in the field of astronomy and geodesy meticulously measured the arc of the meridian from Dunkirk to Barcelona. In 1797, the calculations were completed, and two years later the first standard of the meter was made - a platinum ruler, called the "archive meter", or "archive meter". The unit of mass, the kilogram, was taken to be the mass of one cubic decimeter of water (at 4 °C) taken from the Seine. The platinum cylindrical weight became the standard of the kilogram.

Over the years, however, it became clear that the natural prototypes of these standards - the Parisian meridian and the waters from the Seine - are not very convenient for reproduction, and besides, they do not differ in exemplary constancy. Such "sins" were considered unforgivable by metrological scientists. In 1872, the International Metric Commission decided to abandon the services of a natural prototype of length: this honorary role was entrusted to the "archival meter", according to which 31 standards were made in the form of bars, but not from pure platinum, but from its alloy with iridium (10%). After 17 years, a similar fate befell the water from the Seine: a weight made of the same platinum-iridium alloy was approved as the prototype of the kilogram, and 40 of its exact copies became international standards.

Over the past century, "in the realm of weights and measures" there have been some changes: the "archival meter" was forced to retire (the length equal to 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange radiation of the krypton isotope 86 Kr became the standard of the meter). But the "most important in the world" kilogram of platinum-iridium alloy still remains in service.

India "breaks through" the fog

The rare metal indium played an important role in ... protecting London from massive German air raids during the Second World War. Due to the extremely high reflectivity of indium, mirrors made from it allowed air defense searchlights in search of air pirates to easily "pierce" with powerful beams the dense fog that often envelops the British Isles. Since indium belongs to a low-melting metal, the mirror constantly needed to be cooled during the operation of the searchlight, but the British military department willingly went to additional expenses, counting with satisfaction the number of enemy aircraft shot down.

Forty years later

In the spring of 1942, the English cruiser Edinburgh, escorted by a convoy, left Murmansk, carrying more than five tons of gold - the payment of the USSR to the allies for military supplies.

However, the cruiser did not arrive at the destination port: it was attacked by fascist submarines and destroyers, which inflicted serious damage on it. And although the cruiser could still stay afloat, the command of the English convoy decided to sink the ship so that the enemy would not get the most valuable cargo.

A few years after the end of the war, an idea was born - to extract gold from the belly of a sunken ship. But it took more than one decade before the idea came to life.

In April 1981, an agreement was reached between the USSR and Great Britain on the lifting of the gold cargo, and soon the British company, with which the corresponding contract was concluded, began to work. A specially equipped rescue vessel "Stefaniturm" arrived at the place of death of "Edinburgh".

To combat the sea elements, the company attracted experienced and courageous divers. different countries. The difficulties were not only that the gold rested under a 260-meter water column and a layer of silt, but also that there was a compartment with ammunition next to it, ready to explode at any moment.

Days passed. Replacing each other, divers step by step cleared the way to the gold bars, and finally, late in the evening of September 16, a diver from Zimbabwe, John Rose, brought a heavy black blank to the surface.

When his colleagues wiped off the dirt and oil that covered the surface of the metal with gasoline, everyone saw the long-awaited yellow sheen of gold. Down and Out trouble started! The ascent continued for 20 days, until the raging Barents Sea forced the divers to stop working. In total, 431 ingots of gold of the highest standard (9999) weighing almost 12 kilograms were extracted from the abyss. Each of them at the current rate is estimated at 100 thousand pounds sterling. But 34 ingots still remained at the bottom to wait in the wings.

All the gold raised from the Edinburgh was delivered to Murmansk. Here it was carefully weighed, “credited” and then divided in accordance with the agreement: part was transferred as a reward to the “miner” company, and the rest of the gold was divided between the Soviet and British sides in a ratio of two to one.

Treasures in the abyss

At the end of World War II, an American submarine sank the Japanese ship Awa Maru in the East China Sea. This ship, disguised as a floating hospital, was actually on a responsible mission to transport valuables looted in East and Southeast Asia. On board, in particular, there were 12 tons of platinum, a large amount of gold, including 16 tons of antique gold coins, 150 thousand carats of rough diamonds, about 5 thousand tons of rare metals.

Gone in the abyss of wealth for almost four decades, haunted many treasure seekers. With the support of the Japanese government, an expedition was recently organized to raise a ship "stuffed" with precious metals. However, the task is complicated by the fact that the location of "Awa Maru" has not yet been established. True, there are reports in the press that the Japanese were ahead of the Chinese, who allegedly discovered the vessel and have already begun to "clean up" the seabed.

Oil "ore"

On the northeastern coast of the Caspian Sea there is the Buzachi Peninsula. Long ago, industrial oil production began here. In itself, this event would not have caused a great resonance if it had not turned out that the Buzachi oil is characterized by a high content of ... vanadium.

Now scientists of the Institute of Chemistry, Oil and Natural Salts, as well as the Institute of Metallurgy and Enrichment of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR are developing an effective technology for extracting valuable metal from oil "ore".

Vanadium from ascidians

Some marine plants and animals - holothurians, ascidians, sea ​​urchins- they "collect" vanadium, extracting it from water in some way unknown to man. Some scientists believe that vanadium, present in living organisms of this group, performs the same functions as iron in the blood of humans and higher animals, that is, it helps to absorb oxygen, or, figuratively speaking, "breathe". Other scientists believe that vanadium is necessary for the inhabitants of the seabed not for breathing, but for nutrition. Which of these scientists is right, further research will show. So far, it has been possible to establish that the blood of holothurians contains up to 10% of vanadium, and in some varieties of ascidians, the concentration of this element in the blood is billions of times higher than its content in sea water. Real "piggy banks" of vanadium!

Scientists became interested in the possibility of extracting vanadium from these "piggy banks". In Japan, for example, ascidian plantations occupy entire kilometers of seashores. These animals are very prolific: up to 150 kilograms of ascidians are removed from one square meter of blue plantations. After harvesting, live vanadium "ore" is sent to special laboratories, where the metal needed by the industry is obtained from it. There was a message in the press that Japanese metallurgists had already smelted steel, which was alloyed with vanadium, "extracted" from ascidians.

Cucumbers stuffed with iron

Biologists are increasingly discovering that processes can take place in living organisms that normally require high temperatures or pressures. So, recently the attention of scientists was attracted by sea cucumbers - representatives of an ancient genus that has existed for 50 million years. It turned out that in the gelatinous body of these animals up to 20 centimeters long, which usually live in silt at the bottom of the seas and oceans, ordinary iron accumulates right under the skin in the form of tiny balls (no more than 0.002 mm in diameter). It is still unclear how sea cucumbers manage to “extract” this iron and why they need such a “stuffing”. A series of experiments with iron isotopes may provide an answer to these questions.

Mustaches are in vogue

Ever since the Stone Age gave way to the era of copper and the dominant position among the materials used by man was occupied by metal, people have constantly searched for ways to increase its strength. In the middle of the 20th century, scientists faced the problems of space exploration, the conquest of the ocean depths, mastering the energy of the atomic nucleus, and to successfully solve them, new structural materials were needed, including superstrong metals.

Shortly before this, physicists calculated by calculation the maximum possible strength of substances: it turned out to be tens of times greater than actually achieved. How can the strength characteristics of metals be brought closer to the theoretical limits?

The answer, as so often in the history of science, came quite unexpectedly. Even during the Second World War, many cases of failure of various electronic devices, capacitors, marine telephone cables were recorded. Soon it was possible to establish the cause of the accidents: the culprits were the smallest (one to two microns in diameter) crystals of tin or cadmium in the form of needles and fibers, which sometimes grew on the surface of steel parts coated with a layer of these metals. To successfully deal with whiskers, or "whiskers" (as the harmful metal "vegetation" was called), they had to be carefully studied. Whisker crystals of hundreds of metals and compounds have been grown in laboratories in various countries. They became the object of numerous studies, as a result of which it turned out (indeed, there is a blessing in disguise) that the "mustache" has an enormous strength, close to theoretical. The amazing strength of whiskers is due to the perfection of their structure, which, in turn, is due to their miniature size. The smaller the crystal, the less likely it is to have various defects - internal and external. So, if the surface of ordinary metals, even polished, at high magnification resembles a well-ploughed field, then the surface of whiskers under the same conditions looks almost even (roughness was not found in some of them even at a magnification of 40,000 times).

From the point of view of the designer, it is quite appropriate to compare the "whiskers" with an ordinary web, which, in terms of strength to weight or length, can be considered a "record holder" among all natural and synthetic materials.

Lead and eternal snow

Recently, the attention of scientists has been riveted to the problems of protection environment from industrial pollution. Numerous studies indicate that not only in industrial areas, but also far from them, the atmosphere, soil, trees contain many times more toxic elements such as lead and mercury.

Curious data obtained from the analysis of the Greenland firn (dense snow). Firn samples were taken from different horizons corresponding to one or another historical period. In samples dated to 800 BC. e., for every kilogram of firn there is no more than 0.000 000 4 milligrams of lead (this figure is taken as the level of natural pollution, the main source of which is volcanic eruptions). Samples dating back to the middle of the 18th century (the beginning of the industrial revolution) already contained 25 times more of it. Later, a real “invasion” of lead began on Greenland: the content of this element in samples taken from the upper horizons, that is, corresponding to our time, is 500 times higher than the natural level.

Even richer in lead are the eternal snows of European mountain ranges. Thus, its content in the firn of one of the glaciers of the High Tatras has increased by about 15 times over the past 100 years. Unfortunately, earlier samples of firn were not analyzed. If we proceed from the level of natural concentration, then it turns out that in the High Tatras, located next to industrial areas, this level is exceeded by almost 200 thousand times!

Oaks and lead

Relatively recently, centuries-old oaks growing in one of the parks in the center of Stockholm became the object of research by Swedish scientists. It turned out that the content of lead in trees, whose age reaches 400 years, in recent decades increased sharply along with the increase in the intensity of car traffic. So, if in the last century oak wood contained only 0.000001% lead, then by the middle of the 20th century the lead "reserve" had doubled, and by the end of the 70s it had increased by about 10 times. Particularly rich in this element is the side of the trees that faces the roads and, therefore, is more exposed to exhaust gases.

Is Rey lucky?

In some ways, the Rhine was lucky: it turned out to be the only river on our planet, after which the chemical element, rhenium, is named. But on the other hand, other chemical elements bring a lot of trouble to this river. Recently an international seminar, or "consilium on the Rhine," as the Western press called it, took place in Düsseldorf. The members of the council made a unanimous diagnosis: "The river is near death."

The fact is that the banks of the Rhine are densely "populated" with plants and factories, including chemical ones, which generously supply the river with their sewage. Not bad help them in this numerous sewer "tributaries". According to West German scientists, every hour 1250 tons of various salts enter the Rhine waters - a whole train! Every year the river is "enriched" with 3150 tons of chromium, 1520 tons of copper, 12300 tons of zinc, 70 tons of silver oxide and hundreds of tons of other impurities. Is it any wonder that the Rhine is now often referred to as "the gutter" and even "the chamber pot of industrial Europe". And they say that the Rhine was lucky ...

Metal cycle

Studies by American physicists have shown that even in areas where there are no industrial enterprises and heavy traffic, and, consequently, sources of atmospheric pollution, there are microscopic amounts of heavy non-ferrous metals in it.

Where do they come from?

Scientists believe that the underground ore layer of the Earth containing these metals is gradually evaporating. It is known that some substances under certain conditions can turn into vapor directly from the solid state, bypassing the liquid state. Although the process proceeds extremely slowly and on a very small scale, a certain number of "runaway" atoms still manage to reach the atmosphere. However, they are not destined to stay here: rains and snows constantly purify the air, returning the evaporated metals to the land they left behind.

Aluminum will replace bronze

Since ancient times, copper and bronze have been liked by sculptors and chasers. Already in the 5th century BC. e. people learned to cast bronze statues. Some of them were gigantic. At the beginning of the III century BC. e. was created, for example, the Colossus of Rhodes - a landmark of the ancient port of Rhodes on the coast of the Aegean Sea. The statue of the sun god Helios, towering 32 meters at the entrance to the inner harbor of the port, was considered one of the seven wonders of the world.

Unfortunately, the grandiose creation of the ancient sculptor Kharos lasted only a little more than half a century: during the earthquake, the statue collapsed and was then sold to the Syrians as scrap metal.

Rumor has it that the authorities of the island of Rhodes, in order to attract more tourists, intend to restore this wonder of the world in their harbor according to the surviving drawings and descriptions. True, the resurrected Colossus of Rhodes will no longer be made of bronze, but of aluminum. According to the project, inside the head of the revived wonder of the world it is planned to place ... a beer bar.

"Boiled" ore

Not so long ago, French scientists, conducting underwater research in the Red Sea, discovered a kind of pit more than 2,000 meters deep off the coast of Sudan, and the water at this depth turned out to be very hot.

The researchers descended into the sinkhole on the bathyscaphe "Siana", but soon they had to return, because the steel walls of the bathyscaphe quickly heated up to 43 ° C. Water samples taken by scientists showed that the pit was filled with ... hot liquid "ore": the content of chromium, iron, gold, manganese and many other metals in the water turned out to be unusually high.

Why the mountain "sweated"

For a long time, the inhabitants of Tuva noticed that droplets of a shiny liquid appeared from time to time on the stone slopes of one of the mountains. It is no coincidence that the mountain was called Terlig-Khaya, which in translation from Tuvan means "sweaty rock". As geologists have established, mercury, which is contained in the rocks that make up Terlig-Khai, is "to blame" for this. Now, at the foot of the mountain, the workers of the Tuvakobalt plant are exploring and extracting "silver water".

Finding in Kamchatka

There is Lake Ushki in Kamchatka. Several decades ago, four metal mugs were found on its shore - ancient coins. Two coins are poorly preserved, and numismatists of the Leningrad Hermitage were only able to establish their eastern origin. But two other copper mugs told the experts a lot. They were minted in the ancient Greek city of Panticapaeum, which stood on the shore of the strait, which was called the Cimmerian Bosporus (in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bpresent-day Kerch).

It is curious that one of these coins can rightfully be considered a contemporary of Archimedes and Hannibal: scientists dated it to the 3rd century BC. The second coin turned out to be "younger" - it was made in 17 AD, when Panticapaeum became the capital of the Bosporus kingdom. On its front side, the image of King Riskuporides the First is minted, and on the reverse side - the profile of the Roman emperor, most likely Tiberius, who ruled in 14-37 AD. The joint “residence” on the coin of two royal persons at once was explained by the fact that the Bosporan kings bore the title “Friend of the Caesars and friend of the Romans”, and therefore images of Roman emperors were placed on their money.

When and in what ways did the little copper wanderers get from the shores of the Black Sea to the hinterland of the Kamchatka Peninsula? But ancient coins remain silent.

Robbery failed

Assumption Cathedral - the most beautiful building of the Moscow Kremlin. The interior of the cathedral is illuminated by several chandeliers, the largest of which is made of pure silver. During the war of 1812, this precious metal was looted by Napoleonic soldiers, but "due to technical reasons" it was not possible to take it out of Russia. Silver was recaptured from the enemy, and in memory of the victory, Russian craftsmen made this unique chandelier, consisting of several hundred parts, decorated with various ornaments.

"How musical it all is!"

During a yacht trip along the rivers of Europe in the summer of 1905, the great French composer Maurice Ravel visited a large factory located on the banks of the Rhine. What he saw there literally shocked the composer. In one of his letters, he says: “What I saw yesterday stuck in my memory and will remain forever. This is a giant foundry, where 24,000 people work around the clock. How can I convey to you the impression of this realm of metal, these flaming temples fire, from this wonderful symphony of whistles, the noise of drive belts, the roar of hammers that fall on you from all sides ... How musical it all is! I will definitely use it! .. "The composer realized his plan only after almost a quarter of a century. In 1928 he wrote the music for the short ballet Bolero, which became Ravel's most significant work. Industrial rhythms are clearly heard in the music - more than four thousand drum beats in 17 minutes of sound. Truly a symphony of metal!

Titanium for the Acropolis

If the ancient Greeks had known the metal titanium, then it is likely that they would have used it as a building material in the construction of the buildings of the famous Athenian Acropolis. But, unfortunately, the architects of antiquity did not have this "eternal metal". Their wonderful creations were exposed to the destructive influence of centuries. Time ruthlessly destroyed the monuments of Hellenic culture.

At the beginning of our century, the noticeably aged Athenian Acropolis was reconstructed: individual elements of the buildings were fastened with steel reinforcement. But decades passed, the steel was eaten away by rust in some places, many marble slabs sagged and cracked. In order to stop the destruction of the Acropolis, it was decided to replace the steel fasteners with titanium ones, which are not afraid of corrosion, since titanium practically does not oxidize in air. To do this, Greece recently bought a large batch of "eternal metal" from Japan.

Someone loses and someone finds

It is unlikely that there will be at least one person who has not lost anything in his life. According to the British Treasury, the British annually lose two million pounds of gold and silver jewelry alone, and about 150 million coins worth almost three million pounds. Since so much is lost, so much can be found. That is why there have been many "happiness seekers" in the British Isles lately. Modern technology came to their aid: special devices such as a mine detector went on sale, designed to search for small metal objects in thick grass, in bushes and even under a layer of soil. For the right to "test the soil" the Ministry of Internal Affairs of England collects from everyone who wishes (and there are about 100 thousand of them in the country) a tax of 1.2 pounds sterling. Someone managed, apparently, to justify these expenses; several times there were reports in the press that ancient gold coins were found, the cost of which on the numismatic market is very high.

Hair and thoughts

IN last years all sorts of tests have come into fashion to determine the intellectual abilities of a person. However, as an American professor believes, one can completely do without tests, replacing them with an analysis of the hair of the individual being examined. After analyzing more than 800 assorted curls and strands, the scientist revealed a clear, in his opinion, the relationship between mental development and the chemical composition of hair. In particular, he claims that the hair of thinking people contains more zinc and copper than the hair on the heads of their mentally retarded counterparts.

Is this hypothesis worth considering? Apparently, an affirmative answer can be given only if the content of these elements in the hair of the author of the hypothesis is at a sufficiently high level.

Sugar with molybdenum

As you know, many chemical elements are necessary for the normal functioning of living and plant organisms. Usually trace elements (they are called so because they are required in microdoses) enter the body with vegetables, fruits and other foods. Recently, the Kyiv Confectionery Factory began to produce an unusual type of sweet products - sugar, in which microelements necessary for a person are added. The new sugar contains manganese, copper, cobalt, chromium, vanadium, titanium, zinc, aluminum, lithium, molybdenum, of course, in trace amounts.

Have you tried molybdenum sugar yet?

precious bronze

As you know, bronze has never been considered a precious metal. However, the Parker firm intends to make a small batch of souvenir fountain pens (only five thousand pieces) from this widespread alloy, which will be sold at a fabulous price - 100 pounds sterling. What grounds do the company's leaders have to hope for the successful sale of such expensive souvenirs?

The fact is that bronze will serve as the material for the feathers, from which parts of the ship equipment of the famous English transatlantic superliner Queen Elizabeth, built in 1940, were made. In the summer of 1944, the Queen Elizabeth, which became a transport ship during the war years, set a kind of record by ferrying 15,200 military personnel across the ocean in one flight - the largest number of people in the history of navigation. Fate was not kind to this largest passenger ship in the history of the world fleet. The rapid development of aviation after the Second World War led to the fact that in the 60s the Queen Elizabeth was left practically without passengers: the majority preferred a rapid flight over Atlantic Ocean. The luxury liner began to make losses and was sold in the United States, where it was supposed to be laid up, equipping it with fashionable restaurants, exotic bars, and gambling halls. But nothing came of this idea, and the Queen Elizabeth, sold at auction, ended up in Hong Kong. Here the last sad pages of the biography of the unique giant ship were written. In 1972, a fire broke out on it, and the pride of English shipbuilders turned into a pile of scrap metal.

It was then that the Parker company had a tempting idea.

Unusual medal

Huge areas of the ocean floor are covered with iron-manganese nodules. According to experts, the time when industrial mining of underwater ores will begin is not far off. In the meantime, experiments are underway to develop a technology for producing iron and manganese from nodules. There are already first results. A number of scientists who made a significant contribution to the development of the oceans were awarded an unusual commemorative medal: the material for it was iron smelted from ferro-manganese nodules, which were raised from the ocean floor at a depth of about five kilometers.

Toponymy helps geologists

Toponymy (from the Greek words "topos" - place, area, and "onoma" - name) is the science of the origin and development of geographical names. Often the area was named due to some characteristics characteristic of it. That is why, shortly before the war, geologists became interested in the names of some sections of one of the Caucasian ridges: Madneuli, Poladeuri and Sarkineti. Indeed, in Georgian "madani" means ore, "lady" - steel, "rkina" - iron. Indeed, geological exploration confirmed the presence of iron ore in the depths of these places, and soon ancient adits were discovered as a result of excavations.

... Perhaps sometime in the fifth or tenth millennium, scientists will pay attention to the name of the ancient city of Magnitogorsk. Geologists and archaeologists will roll up their sleeves, and work will begin to boil where steel once boiled.

"Bacteria Compass"

Nowadays, when the inquisitive gaze of scientists penetrates deeper and deeper into the depths of the Universe, the interest of science in the microworld, full of secrets and curious facts, does not weaken. A few years ago, for example, one of the employees of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (USA, Massachusetts) managed to discover bacteria that can navigate in the Earth's magnetic field and move strictly in a northerly direction. As it turned out, these microorganisms have two chains of crystalline iron, which, apparently, play the role of a kind of "compass". Further research should show for what "journeys" nature provided the bacteria with this "compass".

copper table

One of the most interesting exhibits of the Nizhny Tagil local history museum- a massive table-monument, made entirely of copper. Why is he remarkable? The answer to this question is given by the inscription on the lid of the table: "This is the first copper in Russia, found in Siberia by the former commissar Nikita Demidov according to the letters of Peter I in 1702, 1705 and 1709, and this table was made from this original copper in 1715." The table weighs about 420 kilograms.

Cast iron exhibits

What collections the world does not know! Postage stamps and postcards, old coins and watches, lighters and cacti, match and wine labels - these are no surprises today. But Z. Romanov, a foundry master from the Bulgarian city of Vidin, has few competitors. He collects figures made of cast iron, but not artistic items, such as the famous Kasli casting, but those "works of art" of which he is the author. molten iron. During pouring, metal spatters, while solidifying, sometimes take on bizarre shapes. The foundryman's collection, which he called Cast Iron Jokes, contains animal and human figurines, fabulous flowers, and many other curious objects that cast iron has created and noticed by the keen eye of the collector.

Somewhat more cumbersome and, perhaps, less aesthetically pleasing are the exhibits from the collection of one of the inhabitants of the United States: he collects cast-iron covers from sewer wells. As the saying goes, “whatever the child is amused by…” However, the wife of the happy owner of numerous lids apparently reasoned differently: when there was no more free space left in the house, she realized that the lid had come to the family hearth and filed for divorce.

How much is silver now?

Silver coins were first minted in Ancient Rome as early as the 3rd century BC. For more than two millennia, silver has done an excellent job with one of its functions - to serve as money. And today silver coins are in circulation in many countries. But here's the problem: inflation and rising prices for precious metals, including silver, on the world market have led to a noticeable gap between the purchasing power of a silver coin and the value of the silver contained in it, which is growing every year. So, for example, the value of the silver contained in the Swedish krona, issued between 1942 and 1967, today has actually turned out to be 17 times higher than the official rate of this coin.

Some enterprising people decided to take advantage of this discrepancy. Simple calculations showed that it is much more profitable to extract silver from one-crown coins than to use them for their intended purpose in stores. Melting the crowns into silver, the businessmen "earned" about 15 million crowns in a few years. They would have smelted silver further, but the Stockholm police stopped their financial and metallurgical activities, and the smelting businessmen were brought to justice.

steel diamonds

For many years, the hilt of a sword made by Tula craftsmen at the end of the 18th century and presented by them to Catherine II was exhibited in the weapons department of the State Historical Museum. Of course, the hilt, intended as a gift to the Empress, was not simple and not even gold, but diamond. More precisely, it was strewn with thousands of steel beads, which the craftsmen of the Tula Arms Plant gave the appearance of diamonds with the help of a special cut.

The art of cutting steel appeared, apparently, at the beginning of the 18th century. Among the numerous gifts received by Peter I from Tula, an elegant safe box with faceted steel balls on the lid attracted attention. And although there were few facets, metal "precious stones" played, attracted the eye. Over the years, the diamond cut (16-18 facets) is replaced by the brilliant cut, where the number of facets can reach hundreds. But it took a lot of time and labor to turn steel into diamonds, so often steel jewelry turned out to be more expensive than real ones. At the beginning of the last century, the secrets of this wonderful art were gradually lost. Alexander I also had a hand in this, categorically forbidding gunsmiths to engage in such "trinkets" at the factory.

But back to Ephesus. During the renovation of the museum, the hilt was stolen by crooks, who were seduced by a lot of diamonds: it never occurred to the robbers that these “stones” were made of steel. When the "fake" was discovered, the frustrated kidnappers, trying to cover their tracks, committed another crime: they broke the priceless creation of Russian craftsmen and buried it in the ground.

Nevertheless, the hilt was found, but corrosion dealt ruthlessly with man-made diamonds: the vast majority of them (about 8.5 thousand) were covered with a layer of rust, and many were completely destroyed. Almost all experts believed that it was impossible to restore the hilt. But nevertheless, there was a person who undertook this most difficult task: it was the Moscow artist-restorer E. V. Butorov, who already had many revived masterpieces of Russian and Western art.

"I was well aware of the responsibility and complexity of the work ahead," says Butorov. “Everything was unclear and unknown. The principle of assembling the hilt was incomprehensible, the technology for making a diamond facet was unknown, there were no tools necessary for restoration. Before starting work, I studied the era of creating a hilt, the technology of weapons production of that time for a long time.”

The artist was forced to try different ways of cutting, combining restoration work with a research search. The work was complicated by the fact that "diamonds" differed markedly both in shape (oval, "marquise", "fantasy", etc.), and in size (from 0.5 to 5 millimeters), "simple" cutting (12 –16 facets) alternated with "royal" (86 facets).

And now behind ten years of intense jewelry work, crowned with great success by a talented restorer. The newly born hilt is on display at the State Historical Museum.

underground palace

Mayakovskaya is rightfully considered one of the most beautiful stations of the Moscow Metro. It charms Muscovites and guests of the capital with its amazing lightness of forms and grace of lines. But, apparently, few people know that this soaring openwork of the underground vestibule was achieved due to the fact that during its construction, for the first time in the practice of domestic metro construction, steel structures were used that managed to perceive the monstrous load of many meters of soil.

The builders of the station also used steel as a finishing material. According to the project, corrugated stainless steel was required for facing the arched structures. Specialists of "Dirizhablestroy" rendered a great help to the metro builders. The fact is that this enterprise had the latest technology for that time, including the only wide-strip profiling mill in the country. At that time, an all-metal folding airship designed by K. E. Tsiolkovsky was being assembled at this enterprise. The shell of this airship consisted of metal "shells" connected into a movable "lock". For rolling such parts, a special mill was built.

The honorary order of the metro builders "Airship system" completed on time; for reliability, this organization sent its installers to the metro station, who, even deep underground, turned out to be on top.

"Monument" to iron

In 1958, in Brussels, an unusual building, the Atomium, majestically towered over the territory of the World Industrial Exhibition. Nine huge (diameter 18 meters) metal balls seemed to be hanging in the air: eight - along the tops of the cube, the ninth - in the center. It was a model of the crystal lattice of iron, magnified 165 billion times. The atomium symbolized the greatness of iron - a hard-working metal, the main metal of industry.

When the exhibition closed, small restaurants and viewing platforms were placed in the balls of the Atomium, which were visited by about half a million people annually. It was assumed that the unique building would be dismantled in 1979. However, taking into account the good condition of the metal structures and the considerable income brought by Atomium, its owners and the Brussels authorities signed an agreement extending the life of this "monument" to iron for at least another 30 years, i.e. until 2009.

Titanium monuments

On August 18, 1964, at the pre-dawn hour, a space rocket was launched on Prospekt Mira in Moscow. This starship was not destined to reach the Moon or Venus, but the fate prepared for it is no less honorable: forever frozen in the Moscow sky, the silvery obelisk will carry through the centuries the memory of the first path laid by man in space.

The authors of the project could not choose the facing material for this majestic monument for a long time. First, the obelisk was designed in glass, then in plastic, then in stainless steel. But all these options were rejected by the authors themselves. After much thought and experimentation, the architects decided to opt for polished titanium sheets. The rocket itself, which crowned the obelisk, was also made of titanium.

This "eternal metal", as titanium is often called, was also preferred by the authors of yet another monumental structure. At the competition of monument projects in honor of the centenary of the International Telecommunication Union, organized by UNESCO, the first place (out of 213 submitted projects) was taken by the work of Soviet architects. The monument, which was supposed to be installed in the Place des Nations in Geneva, was supposed to be two concrete shells 10.5 meters high, lined with polished titanium plates. A person passing between these shells along a special path could hear his voice, steps, the NOISE of the city, see his image in the center of circles going to infinity. Unfortunately, this interesting project was never implemented.

And recently, a monument to Yuri Gagarin was erected in Moscow: a twelve-meter figure of cosmonaut No. 1 on a high column-pedestal and a model of the Vostok spacecraft, on which the historic flight was made, are made of titanium.

Press Giant... cracking nuts

A few years ago, the French company Interforge announced its desire to purchase a heavy-duty press for stamping complex large-sized parts for aviation and space technology. Leading firms from many countries took part in a kind of competition. Preference was given to the Soviet project. Soon an agreement was signed, and at the beginning of 1975, at the entrance to the ancient French city of Issoire, a huge production building appeared, built for one machine - a hydraulic press of unique power with a force of 65,000 tons. The contract provided for not just the supply of equipment, but the turnkey delivery of the press, that is, installation and commissioning by Soviet specialists.

On November 18, 1976, exactly on time, established by the contract, the press stamped the first batch of parts. French newspapers called it the "machine of the century" and cited curious figures. The mass of this giant - 17 thousand tons - is twice the mass of the Eiffel Tower, and the height of the workshop where it is installed is equal to the height of the cathedral Notre Dame of Paris.

Despite its huge size, the process is characterized by a high stamping speed and unusually high precision. On the eve of the start-up of the unit, French television showed how a two-thousand-ton traverse of the press gently splits walnuts without damaging their core, or pushes a matchbox put "on the butt" without leaving the slightest damage on it.

At the ceremony dedicated to the transfer of the press, V. Giscard d "Estaing, then President of France, spoke. Final words In his speech, he delivered in Russian: "Thank you for this excellent achievement, which does honor to Soviet industry."

Torch instead of scissors

A few years ago, a new Light Metals Research Institute was established in Cleveland, USA. At the opening ceremony, the traditional ribbon stretched in front of the entrance to the institute was made of ... titanium. To cut it, the mayor of the city had to use a gas burner and goggles instead of scissors.

iron ring

A few years ago, a new exhibit appeared in the Museum of the History and Reconstruction of Moscow - an iron ring. And although this modest ring could not be compared with luxurious rings made of precious metals and precious stones, the museum workers gave it a place of honor in their exposition. What attracted this ring to their attention?

The fact is that the material for the ring was the iron shackles, which were worn for a long time in Siberia by the Decembrist Yevgeny Petrovich Obolensky, sentenced to eternal hard labor, the chief of staff of the uprising on Senate Square. In 1828, the highest permission came to remove the shackles from the Decembrists. Brothers Nikolai and Mikhail Bestuzhev, who were serving their sentences at the Nerchinsk mines, together with Obolensky, made commemorative iron rings from his shackles.

More than a hundred years after the death of Obolensky, the ring was kept along with other relics in his family, passing from generation to generation. And today, the descendants of the Decembrist gave this unusual iron ring to the museum.

Something about blades

For more than a century, people have been using shaving blades - thin, sharpened plates made of different metals. All-knowing statistics claim that today about 30 billion blades are produced in the world every year.

At first they were made mainly of carbon steel, then it was replaced by "stainless steel". In recent years, the cutting edges of the blades are covered with a thin layer of high-molecular polymer materials that serve as a dry lubricant in the process of cutting hair, and to increase the durability of the cutting edges, atomic films of chromium, gold or platinum are sometimes applied to them.

"Events" at the mines

In 1974, a discovery was registered in the USSR, which is based on complex biochemical processes that take place. bacteria. A long-term study of antimony deposits showed that antimony in them is gradually oxidized, although under normal conditions such a process cannot proceed: this requires high temperatures - more than 300 ° C. What causes antimony to violate the laws of chemistry?

Examination of samples of oxidized ore showed that they were densely populated with previously unknown microorganisms, which were the culprits of oxidative "events" in the mines. But, having oxidized antimony, the bacteria did not rest on their laurels: they immediately used the energy of oxidation to carry out another chemical process - chemosynthesis, i.e., to convert carbon dioxide into organic substances.

The phenomenon of chemosynthesis was first discovered and described back in 1887 by the Russian scientist S. N. Vinogradsky. However, until now, only four elements were known to science, the bacterial oxidation of which releases energy for chemosynthesis: nitrogen, sulfur, iron and hydrogen. Now antimony has been added to them.

Copper "clothes" of GUM

Which of the Muscovites or guests of the capital has not been to the State Department Store - GUM? Built almost a hundred years ago, the shopping arcade building is experiencing its second youth. Specialists of the All-Union Production Research and Restoration Plant performed a great deal of work on the reconstruction of GUM. In particular, the galvanized iron roof that has worn out over the years has been replaced with a modern roofing material - "tiles" made of sheet copper.

Cracks in the mask

For many years, scientists have been arguing about the unique creation of the ancient Egyptian masters - the golden mask of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Some claimed that it was made from a whole bar of gold. Others believed that it was assembled from separate parts. To establish the truth, it was decided to use a cobalt gun. With the help of an isotope of cobalt, or rather the gamma rays emitted by it, it was possible to establish that the mask really consists of several parts, but so carefully fitted to one another that it was impossible to notice the joint lines with the naked eye.

In 1980, the famous collection of ancient Egyptian art was on display in West Berlin. In the center of attention, as always, was the famous mask of Tutankhamen. Unexpectedly, on one of the days of the exhibition, experts noticed three deep cracks on the mask. Probably, for some reason, the "seams", i.e., the junction lines of the individual parts of the mask, began to diverge. Alarmed in earnest, representatives of the commission for culture and tourism of Egypt hastened to return the collection to Egypt. Now it's up to the expert, which should answer the question, what happened to the most valuable work of art of antiquity?

Lunar aluminum

As on Earth, pure metals are relatively rare on the Moon. Nevertheless, particles of metals such as iron, copper, nickel, and zinc have already been found. In a sample of lunar soil taken by the automatic station "Luna-20" in the continental part of our satellite - between the Sea of ​​Crises and the Sea of ​​Abundance - native aluminum was discovered for the first time. When studying the lunar fraction with a mass of 33 milligrams at the Institute of Geology of Ore Deposits, Petrography, Mineralogy and Geochemistry of the USSR Academy of Sciences, three tiny particles of pure aluminum were identified. These are flat, slightly elongated grains measuring 0.22, 0.15 and 0.1 mm with a matte surface and silver-gray in a fresh fracture.

The crystal lattice parameters of native lunar aluminum turned out to be the same as those of pure aluminum samples obtained in terrestrial laboratories. In nature, on our planet, native aluminum was found by scientists only once in Siberia. According to experts, on the Moon, this metal should be more common in its pure form. This is explained by the fact that the lunar soil is constantly "shelled" by streams of protons and other particles of cosmic radiation. Such a bombardment can lead to a violation of the crystal lattice and to breaking the bonds of aluminum with other chemical elements in the minerals that make up the lunar rock. As a result of the "break in relations" particles of pure aluminum appear in the soil.

For profit

Three quarters of a century ago, the Battle of Tsushima took place. In this unequal battle with the Japanese squadron, the depths of the sea swallowed up several Russian ships, among them the cruiser Admiral Nakhimov.

Recently, the Japanese company Nippon Marine decided to raise the cruiser from the bottom of the sea. Of course, the operation to raise the "Admiral Nakhimov" is explained not by love for Russian history and its relics, but by the most selfish considerations: there is information that there were gold bars on board the sunken ship, the cost of which in current prices can range from 1 to 4.5 billion dollars.

We have already managed to determine the place where the cruiser lies at a depth of about 100 meters, and the company is ready to start lifting it. According to experts, this operation will last several months and cost the company about one and a half million dollars. Well, for the sake of billions, you can risk millions.

Deep antiquities

Made hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of years ago, products made of wood or stone, ceramics or metal adorn the stands of the largest museums in the world, take pride of place in numerous private collections. Fans of antiquity are ready to pay fabulous money for the works of ancient masters, and some enterprising lovers of money, in turn, are ready to create a wide range and profitably sell "deep antiquities."

How to distinguish genuine rarities from finely crafted fakes? Previously, the only "instrument" for this purpose was the experienced eye of a specialist. But, alas, it is not always possible to rely on it. Today, science allows you to fairly accurately determine the age of various products from any materials.

Perhaps the main object of falsification are gold jewelry, figurines, coins of ancient peoples - Etruscans and Byzantines, Incas and Egyptians, Romans and Greeks. Methods for establishing the authenticity of gold items are based on technological examination and analysis of the metal. For certain impurities, old gold can be easily distinguished from new, and the methods of metal processing used by ancient masters, and the nature of their work, are so original and unique that the chances of counterfeiters to succeed are reduced to zero.

Experts recognize copper and bronze fakes by the features of the metal surface, but mainly by its chemical composition. Since it has changed many times over the centuries, each period is characterized by a certain content of the main components. So, in 1965, the collection of the Kunsthandel Museum in Berlin was replenished with a valuable exhibit - a late antique bronze watering can in the shape of a horse. It was believed that this watering can, or rhyton, is a "Coptic work of the 9th-10th centuries." Exactly the same bronze rhyton, the authenticity of which was not in doubt, is kept in the Hermitage. A careful comparison of the exhibits led scientists to the idea that the Berlin horse is nothing more than a skillfully made fake. Indeed, the analysis confirmed the fears: the bronze contained 37-38% zinc - a bit too much for the 10th century. Most likely, experts believe, this rhyton was born only a few years before it came to the Kunsthandel, that is, approximately in 1960 - at the "rush hour" of fashion for Coptic products.

In the fight against fakes

To determine the authenticity of ancient pottery, scientists successfully use the method of archeomagnetism. What is it? When the ceramic mass is cooled, the iron particles contained in it have a "habit" to line up along the lines of force of the Earth's magnetic field. And since it changes over time, the nature of the arrangement of iron particles also changes, due to which, through simple studies, it is possible to determine the age of the “suspected” ceramic product. Even if the forger managed to select the composition of the ceramic mass, similar to the ancient compositions, and skillfully copy the shape of the product, then, of course, he is not able to arrange the iron particles in an appropriate way. This is what will give him away with his head.

The growth of the "iron madam"

As you know, metals have a rather high coefficient of thermal expansion.

For this reason, steel structures, depending on the time of year, and, consequently, on the ambient temperature, become either longer or shorter. So, the famous Eiffel Tower - "Iron Madame", as Parisians often call it - is 15 centimeters higher in summer than in winter.

"Iron Rain"

Our planet is not very hospitable to celestial wanderers: upon entering the dense layers of its atmosphere, large meteorites usually explode and fall to the earth's surface in the form of so-called "meteorite showers".

The most abundant such "rain" fell on February 12, 1947 over the western spurs of the Sikhote-Alin. It was accompanied by a roar of explosions, within a radius of 400 kilometers a fireball was visible - a bright fireball with a huge luminous smoky tail.

An expedition of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences soon arrived in the fall zone of the space alien to study such unusual "atmospheric precipitation". In the wilds of the taiga, scientists found 24 craters with a diameter of 9 to 24 meters, as well as more than 170 funnels and holes formed by particles of "iron rain". In total, the expedition collected over 3,500 iron fragments with a total weight of 27 tons. According to experts, before meeting with the Earth, this meteorite, called the Sikhote-Alin, weighed about 70 tons.

Termite geologists

Geologists often use the "services" of many plants, which serve as a kind of indicators of certain chemical elements and, thanks to this, help to detect deposits of the corresponding minerals in the soil. And a mining engineer from Zimbabwe, William West, decided to involve as assistants in the geological search representatives not of flora, but of fauna, more precisely, ordinary African termites. When building their cone-shaped "dormitories" - termite mounds (their height sometimes reaches 15 meters), these insects penetrate deep into the ground. Returning to the surface, they carry building material with them - "samples" of soil from various depths. That is why the study of termite mounds - the determination of their chemical and mineral composition - makes it possible to judge the presence of certain minerals in the soil of a given area.

West conducted many experiments, which then formed the basis of his "termite" method. The first practical results have already been obtained: thanks to the method of engineer West, rich gold-bearing seams have been discovered.

What's under the ice of Antarctica?

Discovered in 1820, Antarctica still remains a continent of mysteries: after all, almost all of its territory (by the way, almost one and a half times the area of ​​​​Europe) is encased in an ice shell. The thickness of the ice is on average 1.5–2 kilometers, and in some places reaches 4.5 kilometers.

It is not easy to look under this "shell", and although scientists from a number of countries have been conducting intensive research here for more than a quarter of a century, Antarctica has not revealed all its secrets. In particular, scientists are interested in the natural resources of this continent. Many facts indicate that Antarctica has a common geological past with South America, Africa, Australia and, therefore, these regions should have approximately similar spectra of minerals. Thus, Antarctic rocks apparently contain diamonds, uranium, titanium, gold, silver, and tin. In some places, layers of coal, deposits of iron and copper-molybdenum ores have already been discovered. So far, mountains of ice stand as an obstacle on the way to them, but sooner or later these riches will come at the disposal of people.

B. G. Andreev

When a person unfamiliar with shorthand observes at a meeting the hand of a stenographer quickly sliding over paper, it seems to him in the highest degree surprising the opportunity to literally reconstruct the speech of the speaker with the help of “mysterious” hooks and squiggles that appear on the paper. And he is involuntarily amazed at what conveniences, what possibilities, and what enormous savings in time this conventional system of shorthand signs provides.

Rice. 1. Chemical symbols used in Alexandrian books on chemistry.

Rice. 2. Alchemical symbols 1609

Dalton symbols.

Rice. 3. A snapshot from the Dalton table depicting atoms and molecules. Below is the structure of some "complex atoms" according to Dalton's contemporary data.

At a lecture by an English alchemist.

John Dalton (1766-1844).

Jacob Berzelius, creator of the modern chemical language (1779-1848).

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794).

Chemical symbolism seems no less mysterious to a person unfamiliar with chemistry - Latin letters of various sizes, numbers, arrows, pluses, dots, commas, complex figures and combinations of letters and dashes ... And who knows chemistry well knows what opportunities, what conveniences and what time is saved by the skillful use of modern chemical language, equally understandable to a chemist of any nationality.

However, one should not think that this highly convenient language appeared immediately in its modern perfect form. No, he, like everything else in the world, has its own history, and a long history that has been stretching for more than two millennia.

Let us mentally move to the sunny shores of the Mediterranean Sea - to the Egyptian port of Alexandria. This is one of the oldest cities in the world, it was founded by Alexander the Great more than three hundred years before our era. Soon after its founding, this city became the most important cultural center of the Mediterranean. Suffice it to say that the famous Alexandrian library, burnt down by religious fanatics-Christians in 47 AD. e., contained 700 thousand volumes of essays on various branches of knowledge, including chemistry.

Metallurgy, glass-making, textile dyeing and other chemical industries developed in ancient Egypt provided a lot of empirical material that Greek and Arab scientists tried to generalize and systematize, attracted to Alexandria by its cultural values. Fortunately, some monuments of this culture survived the barbaric destruction by Christians, including some works on chemistry. They survived, despite the fact that in 296 AD, e. The Roman emperor Diocletian, in a special decree, where, by the way, the word “chemistry” is officially mentioned for the first time, ordered that all books on chemistry be burned in Alexandria.

And so, in the writings of Alexandrian authors, we already meet chemical symbolism. Looking at fig. 1, the reader will see how much easier our modern chemical signs are to remember than this symbolism. However, sometimes the same trick that we use is already used here: the symbols for vinegar, salt, arsenic were obtained by reducing the corresponding Greek words.

The situation is more complicated with metals. The then known metals were dedicated to the heavenly bodies: gold to the Sun, silver to the Moon, copper to Venus, mercury to Mercury, iron to Mars, tin to Jupiter, and lead to Saturn. Hence the metals are here denoted by the signs of the respective planets. From this association of metals with planets, it followed, among other things, that before undertaking any chemical operations with a given metal, it was necessary to inquire about the location in the sky of the corresponding “patron planet”.

Chemists' successors ancient world there were alchemists who also adopted the comparison of metals with planets. It is interesting to note that traces of this remain even in some modern chemical names: for example, mercury in English, French and Spanish is called mercury (mercurg, mercure, mercurio). However, the accumulation of chemical facts and the discovery of many new substances caused the development of a special alchemical symbolism (Fig. 2). This symbolism, which persisted for many centuries, was no more easy to remember than the Alexandrian; besides, it was not distinguished by either consistency or uniformity.

An attempt to create a rational chemical symbolism was made only at the end of the 18th century by the famous John Dalton, the founder of chemical atomism. He introduced special signs for each chemical element known at that time (Fig. 3). At the same time, he made a very important clarification, which formed the basis of modern chemical symbolism: with a certain sign, Dalton denoted not a given element in general, but one atom of this element. Dalton designated chemical compounds (as it is done now) by a combination of symbols included in a given compound of elements; moreover, the number of signs corresponded to the number of atoms of one or another element in the "complex atom", i.e., about the molecule of the compound.

The figures given show, however, that Dalton's signs were not particularly convenient for memorization, not to mention the fact that the formulas of more complex compounds are made very cumbersome with this system. But, considering Dalton's icons, one can notice one interesting detail: Dalton designated some elements by the initial letters of their English names placed in circles - iron (iron), copper (copper), etc. It was this detail that the creator of the modern chemical language drew attention to Jakob Berzelius, the same Berzelius to whom the gymnasium authorities wrote in his graduation certificate that he "justified only dubious hopes", and who later became the most famous chemist of his time.

Berzelius suggested designating chemical elements by the first Latin letter of their names, usually taken from Latin or Greek. If the names of several elements begin with the same letter, then one of them is designated by one letter (for example, carbon C), and the rest by two (calcium Ca, cadmium Cd, cerium Ce, cesium Cs, cobalt Co, etc.). At the same time, as with Dalton, the symbol of an element has a strictly quantitative meaning: it denotes one atom of a given element and at the same time as many weight units of this element as its atomic weight contains units. For example, the sign O denotes one oxygen atom and 16 wt. units oxygen, sign N - one nitrogen atom and 14.008 wt. units nitrogen, etc.

There is nothing easier than writing the formula of a chemical compound using the Berzelius system. To do this, you don’t need to pile up a large number of circles one next to the other, like Dalton’s, but you just need to write next to the symbols of the elements that make up this compound, at the bottom right, next to each symbol, mark the number of atoms of this element in the molecule with a small number (one is omitted) : water - H 2 O, sulfuric acid - H 2 SO 4, bartolet salt - KCIO 3, etc. This formula immediately shows what elements the molecule of this compound consists of, how many atoms of each element are included in its composition and what are the weight ratios elements in a molecule.

With the help of such formulas, chemical reactions are simply and clearly depicted by special equations. The principle of compiling such equations was established by the famous Lavoisier, who wrote:

“If I distill an unknown salt with sulfuric acid and find nitric acid in the receiver and vitriol in the remainder, I conclude that the original salt was saltpeter. I come to this conclusion by mentally writing down the following equation, based on the assumption that the total weight of everything remains the same before and after the operation.

If x is an acid of an unknown salt and y is an unknown base, I write: x [+] y [+] sulfuric acid = nitric acid [+] vitriol = nitric acid [+] sulfuric acid [+] caustic potash.

From this I conclude: x = nitric acid, y = caustic potash, and the original salt was saltpeter.

Now we will write this chemical reaction in the Berzelius system simply:

2KNO 3 + H 2 SO 4 \u003d 2HNO 3 + K 2 SO 4.

And how much this little line of signs and numbers says to a chemist of any nationality. He immediately sees what substances are the starting materials in the reaction, what substances are its products, what is the qualitative and quantitative composition of these substances; using a table of atomic weights and simple calculations, he will quickly determine how many initial substances must be taken in order to obtain a certain amount of the substance he needs, etc.

The system of chemical symbolism developed by Berzelius proved to be so expedient that it has been preserved up to the present. However, chemistry does not stand still, it is developing rapidly, new facts and concepts are constantly appearing in it, which, of course, are reflected in chemical symbolism.

The flourishing of organic chemistry caused the appearance of formulas for the structure of chemical compounds, formulas that are often complex in appearance, but at the same time surprisingly harmonious and visual, telling a person who knows how to understand them much more than many lines and even pages of text. For example, the benzene symbol, which at first glance seems artificial and seems to resemble an alchemical dragon devouring its own tail, turned out to reflect the basic properties of this compound and its derivatives so accurately that the latest crystallographic studies brilliantly confirmed the actual existence of the combination of atoms represented by this symbol.

Even in the days of Berzelius, signs like Ca, Fe ", etc. appeared in chemistry, but they soon disappeared and resurrected again only after the Arrhenius theory of electrolytic dissociation was approved in chemistry. Berzelius originally denoted by points the number of oxygen atoms associated with a given element , and commas - the number of sulfur atoms; thus, the symbol Ca denoted calcium oxide (CaO), and the symbol Fe "- iron disulfide (FeS 2). For the longest time, these signs were kept in mineralogy, but in the end, periods and commas were also replaced by modern symbols for oxygen and sulfur. Now the dots and commas near the symbol of atoms (or groups of atoms) have a completely different meaning: they denote positively or negatively charged ions, that is, atoms (or groups of atoms) that have lost their way and attached one or more electrons. Ionic equations further simplify the image of the essence of a number of chemical reactions; for example, any reaction of the formation of a precipitate of silver chloride from solutions of various salts can be represented by a simple and clear ionic equation:

Ag ˙ + Cl’ ˙ = AgCl

Before our eyes, a new kind of chemical symbolism has appeared and won the rights of citizenship, reflecting the amazing achievements of recent years in the field of revealing the secrets of the structure of atoms and the transformation of elements. Until quite recently, any chemist would have been completely perplexed by formulas like the following:

Now we know that here the small numbers at the bottom of the symbol of the element still indicate the number of atoms of this element in the molecule, and the small numbers at the top - the atomic weight of the corresponding isotope (isotopes are elements that are identical in chemical properties, i.e., in terms of nuclear charge, but have different atomic weights). And the equation

tells us that when nitrogen is bombarded with alpha particles (the nuclei of helium atoms), some of its atoms are converted into an isotope of oxygen with an atomic weight of 17; the numbers below here already denote ordinal numbers or, in other words, the value of the positive charge of the nucleus of the atom of the corresponding element.

Some of these equations contain symbols that were not in any chemistry book just a few years ago:

The first of them denotes a proton [+] (the positively charged nucleus of a protium atom, i.e., hydrogen with an atomic weight of 1), the second is a neutron (a neutral particle with the mass of a proton), the third is a positron (a particle similar in mass to an electron, but having a positive charge).

The icons and numbers given in the last examples symbolize the most amazing achievements of modern science, which the talented creator of the foundations of the now accepted international chemical language could hardly even dream of.

Moscow
14/IX 1936

Today, a huge number of unusual, funny or even frightening monuments are scattered around the world. Contemporary sculptors they are not afraid to experiment, there is no limit to their creativity. Tourists line up to take pictures in front of such unusual structures.
There is a legend according to which a person who touches all these unusual monuments will become a superman.But the existence of monuments to substances is known only to a limited contingent.

salt monument

In the city of Solikamsk in the Urals (Russia), a very unusual monument- a monument of salt ... and even with ears.

The city has been known since ancient times for its salt-making traditions. And the inhabitants of the city themselves were nicknamed "salty ears" in the old days. The nickname comes from the way salt was loaded in the old days. Salt poured into bags was loaded onto barges for further transportation to the markets. The movers carried the sacks, throwing them on their backs, so the salt spilled on their heads, behind their collars and on their ears, which made them blush and look funny. The bronze monument has the shape of a salt shaker with large ears, it was installed in the center of the city for all to see - the monument "Permyak-salty ear"

And here is another monument in the city of Solikamsk, the center of industrial salt production. A monument to a bronze loaf of bread with a salt shaker.

Salt was once worth its weight in gold. It was usually mined from salt lakes. One of these lakes was Lake Elton, from where, during the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, a tract was laid to Pokrovskaya Sloboda (now the city of Engels). Bookmark settlement dates back1747 and is associated with the decree of Empress Catherine II on the beginning of salt mining on the lake. The symbol of the city of Engels is a bull-salt carrier. The sculpture is a bull with a salt shaker coming out of the coat of arms of the city, made in the "forged copper" technique. The monument is 2.9 meters high and 4.5 meters long.

sugar monument

Monument to Refined Sugar, in honor of the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Danilovsky Sugar Refinery. It was installed in 2009, on the territory of a former factory and is closed from the gaze of not only tourists, but also casual passers-by. The monument is executed quite simply, but at the same time it is capacious and concise: a white cube is installed on the pedestal, symbolizing the very famous refined sugar.

And the first "invented" refined sugar in the Czech Republic, in 1843, there is also a monument in the city of Dacica. It was installed in 2003 to mark the 160th anniversary of the invention of refined sugar. The monument to refined sugar is installed on the site where the sugar factory used to be and is a snow-white, shiny cube with polished edges placed on a pedestal made of gray granite, symbolizing refined sugar. The date: 1843 is engraved on the pedestal.

A monument to refined sugar was also opened in Sumy on the occasion of the 355th anniversary of the city in memory of the former sugar glory of Sumy. A large sugar cube with missing pieces of sugar can be climbed over stone cubes to take pictures at the landmark, which symbolizes the wealth of the area.

oil monument

In the city of Kogalym there is an original monument "A Drop of Oil". Monument "Drop of Oil" or as it is called in another way
"A drop of life" perfectly reflects the essence of the origin of the city. After all, the appearance of Kogalym is associated with the discovery of several oil fields in the 70s of the last century. It is made of black metal. On the sides there are inserts, on the one hand, Khanty, symbolizing the indigenous people, on the other hand, oilmen, pumping the wealth of the earth - oil, as well as the bride and groom, symbolizing the future of the city.

Oil Fountain Monument

Oil monument in Leninogorsk

Oil monument in Tyumen

Iron monument

One of the most famous sights of Brussels, which has become its symbol, is the Atomium, a 27-meter monument to the iron molecule. The Atomium is not just a huge urban sculpture, it is a gigantic symbol of mankind's success in studying atomic energy and the possibility of its peaceful use. It is also called the symbol of the atomic age.
This structure is 102 meters high and weighs about 2400 tons. The atomium consists of 9 spheres-atoms, combined into a cubic fragment of the crystal lattice of an iron atom, 165 billion times larger than a real atom. The diameter of each sphere is 18 meters, six of them can be visited. There is a restaurant, exhibition halls and an observation deck. You can travel inside the giant atom through pipes between the spheres, they contain escalators and connecting corridors.

Atomium has a younger brother of Russian origin - a small monument to peaceful atom in the city of Volgodonsk.

Monument to the molecule

"Glory to Soviet Science" in the form of a DNA molecule adorns Voronezh.

Monument to the molecule in Brovary (Ukraine)

Municipal Budgetary Educational Institution "Secondary School No. 4", Safonovo, Smolensk Region Substances used in architecture” Project typology: abstract individual short-term Purpose: integration of the topic “Architectural monuments” of the subject “World artistic culture” and information about chemicals used in architecture. Chemistry is a science associated with many fields of activity, as well as with other sciences: physics, geology, biology. She did not bypass one of the most interesting activities - architecture. A person working in this field will inevitably have to deal with different types building materials and somehow be able to combine them, add something to them for greater strength, durability, or to give the most beautiful appearance building. To do this, architecture needs to know the composition and properties of building materials, it is necessary to know their behavior in normal and extreme environmental conditions of the area in which construction is being carried out. The purpose of this work is to introduce the most interesting buildings in terms of their architectural design and tell about the materials used in their construction. No. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Section of the project Assumption Cathedral St. Isaac's Cathedral Intercession Cathedral Smolensky Assumption Cathedral St. Vladimir's Church Presentation Used objects Photo Photo Photo Photo Photo Vladimir Assumption Cathedral It is located in Vladimir. The "golden age" of the construction of ancient Vladimir is the second half of the 12th century. Assumption Cathedral of the city is the earliest architectural monument of this period. Built in 1158-1160 under Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky, the cathedral later underwent significant restructuring. During a fire in 1185, the old Assumption Cathedral was badly damaged. Prince Vsevolod III, "who did not look for craftsmen from the Germans," immediately proceeds to restore it with the help of local craftsmen. The building was built of hewn white stone, which made up a powerful "box" of the wall, which was filled with rubble on a durable lime mortar. For your information, rubble stone is large pieces of irregular shape 150-500 mm in size, weighing 20-40 kg, obtained during the development of limestones, dolomites and sandstones (less often), granites and other igneous rocks. The stone obtained by blasting is collectively called "torn". The quarry stone must be uniform, free of signs of weathering, delamination and cracks, and free of loose and clay inclusions. The compressive strength of the stone from sedimentary rocks is not less than 10 MPa (100 kgf/cm), the softening coefficient is not less than 0.75, frost resistance is not less than 15 cycles. Rubble stone is widely used for rubble and rubble concrete laying of foundations, walls of unheated buildings, retaining walls, ice cutters and reservoirs. The new Assumption Cathedral was created in the era of Vsevolod, about which the author of The Tale of Igor's Campaign wrote that the prince's soldiers could "spill the Volga with their oars." Cathedral from one-domed becomes five-domed. There is relatively little sculptural decoration on its facades. Its plastic richness is in the profiled slopes of slit-like windows and wide perspective portals with ornamented tops. Both its exterior and interior acquire a new character. The interior of the cathedral amazed contemporaries with its festive nationality, which was created by an abundance of gilding, majolica floors, precious utensils, and especially fresco wall painting. St. Isaac's Cathedral One of the no less beautiful buildings is St. Isaac's Cathedral, located in St. Petersburg. In 1707, the church, which received the name of St. Isaac's, was consecrated. On February 19, 1712, a public ceremony of the wedding of Peter I with Ekaterina Alekseevna took place in it. On August 6, 1717, on the banks of the Neva, the second St. Isaac's Church was laid, built on the project of the architect G.I. Mattarnovi. Construction work continued until 1727, but already in 1722 the church was mentioned among the active ones. However, the place for its construction was chosen unsuccessfully: the banks of the Neva had not yet been fortified, and the ground slumping that had begun caused cracks in the walls and vaults of buildings. In May 1735, a fire broke out from a lightning strike, which completed the destruction that had begun. On July 15, 1761, by decree of the Senate, the design and construction of the new St. Isaac's Church was entrusted to S.I. Chevakinsky, the author of St. Nicholas Cathedral. But he did not have to carry out his plan. Construction dates have been pushed back. Having ascended the throne in 1762, Catherine II entrusted the design and construction to the architect Antonio Rinaldi. The cathedral was conceived with five complex domes and a high bell tower. Marble cladding should come up with sophistication to the color scheme of the facades. This rock got its name from the Greek "marble" - brilliant. This carbonate rock consists mainly of calcite and dolomite, and sometimes includes other minerals. It arises in the process of deep transformation of ordinary, that is, sedimentary limestones and dolomites. During the processes of metamorphism, taking place under conditions of high temperature and high pressure, sedimentary limestones and dolomites recrystallize and compact; many new minerals are often formed in them. For example, quartz, chalcedony, graphites, hematite, pyrite, iron hydroxides, chlorite, brucite, tremolite, garnet. Most of the listed minerals are observed in marbles only in the form of single grains, but, sometimes, some of them are contained in significant amounts, determining the important physical, mechanical, technical and other properties of the rock. Marble has a well-defined granularity: on the surface of a stone chip, reflections are visible that occur when light is reflected from the so-called cleavage planes of calcite and dolomite crystals. Grains are small (less than 1 mm), medium and large (several millimeters). The transparency of the stone depends on the size of the grains. So Carrara white marble has a compressive strength of 70 megapascals and it breaks down faster under load. The tensile strength of fine-grained marble reaches 150-200 megapascals and this marble is more resistant. But construction progressed very slowly. Rinaldi was forced to leave St. Petersburg without completing the work. After the death of Catherine II, Paul I instructed the court architect Vincenzo Brenna to hastily complete it. Brenna was forced to distort Rinaldi's project: to reduce the size of the upper part of the cathedral, to build one instead of five domes; marble facing was brought only to the cornice, the upper part remained brick. The raw material for silicate bricks is lime and quartz sand. When preparing the mass, lime makes up 5.5-6.5% by weight, and water 6-8%. The prepared mass is pressed and then subjected to heating. The chemical nature of the hardening process of silicate brick is completely different than with a binder based on lime and sand. At high temperatures, the acid-base interaction of calcium hydroxide Ca(OH)2 with silicon dioxide SiO2 is significantly accelerated to form calcium silicate salt CaSiO3. The formation of the latter provides a bond between the grains of sand, and, consequently, the strength and durability of the product. As a result, a squat brick building was created, which did not harmonize with the ceremonial appearance of the capital. On April 9, 1816, during the Easter service, damp plaster fell from the vaults onto the right kliros. Soon the cathedral was closed. In 1809, a competition was announced for the creation of a project for the reconstruction of St. Isaac's Cathedral. Nothing came of the competition. In 1816, Alexander I instructed A. Betancourt to prepare a provision for the restructuring of the cathedral and select an architect for this. Betancourt offered to entrust this work to a young architect who came from France, Auguste Ricard de Montferrand. A. Betancourt presented the album with his drawings to the tsar. Alexander I liked the works so much that a decree was issued appointing Montferrand "imperial architect". Only on July 26, 1819, a solemn act of renewal of St. Isaac's Church took place. The first granite stone with a bronze gilded board was laid on the piles. Granites are among the most common building, decorative and facing materials and have been playing this role since ancient times. It is durable, relatively easy to shape into different shapes, holds a polish well, and weathers very slowly. Usually granite has a granular homogeneous structure and, although it consists of multi-colored grains of different minerals, the general tone of its color is even pink or gray. A specialist geologist called granite a crystalline rock of deep igneous or mountainous origin, consisting of three main minerals: feldspar (usually about 30-50% of the rock volume), quartz (about 30-40%) and mica (up to 10-15%) . This is either pink microcline or orthoclase, then white albite or onygoclase, then two feldspars at once. Similarly, micas are either muscovite (light mica) or biotite (black mica). Sometimes, instead of them, other minerals are present in granite. For example, red garnet or greenhorn blende. All the minerals that make up granite are, by chemical nature, silicates, sometimes of a very complex structure. On April 3, 1825, the Montferrand recycling project was established. When erecting walls and supporting pylons, lime mortar was carefully prepared. Sifted lime and sand were alternately poured into the tubs so that one layer lay on top of the other, then they were mixed, and this composition was kept for at least three days, after which it was used for brickwork. Interestingly, lime is the oldest binding material. Archaeological excavations showed that in the palaces of ancient China there were wall paintings with pigments fixed with slaked lime. Quicklime - calcium oxide CaO - was obtained by roasting various natural calcium carbonates. CaCO₃ CaO +CO₂ The presence of small amounts of undecomposed calcium carbonate in quicklime improves the binding properties. Lime slaking is reduced to the conversion of calcium oxide into hydroxide. CaO + H₂O Ca (OH)2 + 65 kJ Lime hardening is associated with physical and chemical processes. First, the mechanically mixed water evaporates. Secondly, calcium hydroxide crystallizes, forming a calcareous framework of intergrown Ca(OH)₂ crystals. In addition, Ca(OH)₂ interacts with CO₂ to form calcium carbonate (carbonization). Poorly or “falsely” dried plaster can lead to peeling of the oil paint film due to the formation of soap as a result of the interaction of calcium alkali with drying oils. The addition of sand to the lime paste is necessary because otherwise, when it hardens, it shrinks and cracks. The sand serves as a reinforcement. Brick walls were erected with a thickness of two and a half to five meters. Together with marble cladding, this is 4 times the usual thickness of the walls of civil structures. Marble cladding, external, 5-6 cm thick, and internal, 1.5 cm thick, was made together with the brickwork of the walls and connected with it with iron hooks and pyrones. The ceilings were made of bricks. The pavement was supposed to be made of Serdobol granite, and the space behind the fence to be paved with red marble slabs and a red granite border. White, gray, black and colored marbles are found in nature. Colored marbles are very widespread. There is no other decorative stone, with the exception, perhaps, of jasper, which would be characterized by very diverse colors and patterns, like colored marble. The color of marble is usually caused by a finely crystalline, more often dusty, admixture of brightly colored minerals. Red, violet, purple colors are usually explained by the presence of red iron oxide - the mineral sematite. Intercession Cathedral Intercession Cathedral (1555-1561) (Moscow) Built in the 16th century. by the ingenious Russian architects Barma and Postnik, the Pokrovsky Cathedral - the pearl of Russian national architecture - logically completes the ensemble of Red Square. The cathedral is a picturesque structure of nine high towers, decorated with bizarre domes, various in shape and color. Another small figured (tenth) cupola crowns St. Basil's Church. In the center of this group rises the main tower, which differs sharply in size, shape and decoration - the Church of the Intercession. It consists of three parts: a tetrahedron with a square base, an octagonal tier and a tent ending in an octagonal light drum with a gilded dome. The transition from the octagonal part of the central part of the tower to the tent is carried out with the help of a whole system of kokoshniks. The base of the tent rests on a wide white-stone cornice shaped like an eight-pointed star. The central tower is surrounded by four large towers, located along the cardinal points, and four small ones, located diagonally. The lower tier rests with its edges on a plinth made of red brick and white stone, complex in shape and beautiful in pattern. Red clay bricks are made from clay mixed with water, shaped, dried and fired. The formed brick (raw) should not crack during drying. The red color of the brick is due to the presence of Fe₂O₃ in the clay. This color is obtained if the firing is carried out in an oxidizing atmosphere, that is, with an excess of oxygen. In the presence of reducing agents, grayish-lilac tones appear on the brick. Currently, a hollow brick is used, that is, having a cavity of a certain shape inside. For facing buildings, two-layer bricks are made. When it is molded, a layer of light-burning clay is applied to an ordinary brick. Drying and firing of a two-layer facing brick is carried out according to the usual technology. Important characteristics of a brick are moisture absorption and frost resistance. To prevent destruction from weathering, brickwork is usually protected with plaster, tiling. Clinker is a special type of baked clay brick. It is used in architecture for facing the socles of buildings. Clinker bricks are made from special clay with high viscosity and low deformability during firing. It is characterized by relatively low water absorption, high compressive strength and high wear resistance. Smolensk Cathedral of the Assumption No matter which direction you approach Smolensk, you can see the domes of the Cathedral of the Assumption, one of the largest churches in Russia, from far away. The temple crowns a high, located between two ravines deeply cut into the coastal slope, a mountain. Crowned with five domes (instead of seven according to the original version), festive and solemn, with magnificent baroque decor on the facades, it rises high above the city buildings. The grandeur of the building is felt both outside, when you stand at its foot, and inside, where among the space filled with light and air, a giant, unusually solemn and magnificent gilded iconostasis rises up, shimmering with gold - a miracle of woodcarving, one of the outstanding works of decorative art of the 18th century , created in 1730-1739 by the Ukrainian master Sila Mikhailovich Trusitsky and his students P. Durnitsky, F. Olitsky, A. Mastitsky and S. Yakovlev. Near the Assumption Cathedral, almost close to it, there is a two-tier cathedral bell tower. Small, she is somewhat lost against the backdrop of a huge temple. The bell tower was built in 1767 in the forms of the St. Petersburg baroque according to the project of the architect Pyotr Obukhov, a student of the famous baroque master D. V. Ukhtomsky. In the lower part of the bell tower, fragments of the previous building built in 1667 are preserved. Assumption Cathedral in Smolensk was built in 1677-1740. The first cathedral on this site was founded in 1101 by Vladimir Monomakh himself. The cathedral became the first stone building in Smolensk, was rebuilt more than once - including the Assumption Cathedral in Smolensk by the grandson of Monomakh Prince Rostislav, while in 1611 the surviving defenders of Smolensk, who defended themselves from the troops of the Polish king Sigismund III for 20 months, finally, when the Poles nevertheless broke into the city, blew up the powder magazine. Unfortunately, the cellar was located right on Cathedral Hill, and the explosion practically destroyed the ancient temple, burying many Smolensk people and the ancient tombs of Smolensk princes and saints under its rubble. In 1654, Smolensk was returned to Russia, and the pious Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich allocated as much as 2,000 silver rubles from the treasury for the construction of a new main temple in Smolensk. The remains of the ancient walls under the guidance of the Moscow architect Alexei Korolkov were dismantled for more than a year, and in 1677 the construction of a new cathedral began. However, due to the fact that the architect violated the given proportions, construction was suspended until 1712. Assumption Cathedral in Smolensk. In 1740, under the guidance of the architect A.I. Shedel, the work was completed, and the temple was consecrated. In its original form, it stood for only twenty years, due to the presence of different architects and constant changes in the project. It ended with the collapse of the central and western domes of the cathedral (there were seven of them then). The top was restored in 1767-1772, but with a simple traditional five domes, which we now see. This cathedral is not only visible from everywhere, it is also truly huge - twice the size of the Assumption Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin: 70 meters high, 56.2 meters long and 40.5 meters wide. The decoration of the cathedral is made in the Baroque style, both outside and inside. The interior of the cathedral impresses with its splendor and luxury. The work on the painting of the temple lasted 10 years under the direction of S.M. Trusitsky. Assumption Cathedral in Smolensk. The magnificent iconostasis, 28 meters high, has survived to this day, but the main shrine - the icon of the Mother of God Hodegetria - disappeared in 1941. Assumption Cathedral in Smolensk northwest of the cathedral. It was placed on the site of the former bell tower, and ancient foundations have been preserved at the base. At the same time, the fence of the cathedral was built with three high gates, shaped like triumphal arches. From the main street up to the Cathedral Hill, a wide granite staircase of the same time leads up, ending in a promenade. The cathedral was spared by both time and the wars that passed through Smolensk. After the capture of the city, Napoleon even ordered to put up guards, marveling at the magnificence and beauty of the cathedral. Now the cathedral is functioning, services are being held in it. St. Vladimir's Church in Safonovo, Smolensk Region In May 2006, the city of Safonovo celebrated a significant anniversary - a hundred years ago, the first church parish was opened on the territory of the future city. At that time, on the site of the current city blocks there were a number of villages, villages and farms surrounding the railway station, which was called “Dorogobuzh” after the nearby county town. Closest to the station were the village of Dvoryanskoye (now Krasnogvardeiskaya Street) and across the Velichka River from it was the Tolstoy landowner's estate (now there is a small park in its place). Tolstoy, which got its name from the Tolstoy nobles, has been known since the beginning of the 17th century. By the beginning of the 20th century, it was a small owner's estate with one yard. Its owner was an outstanding public figure of the Smolensk province Alexander Mikhailovich Tukhachevsky, a relative of the famous Soviet marshal. Alexander Tukhachevsky in 1902-1908 headed Dorogobuzh local self-government - zemstvo assembly, and in 1909-1917. supervised the provincial zemstvo council. Nobility was owned by the noble families of Leslie and Begichev. The construction in 1870 of a railway station on the banks of the Velichka River turned this remote place into one of the most important economic centers of the Dorogobuzh district. Timber warehouses, inns, shops, a post station, a pharmacy, bakeries appeared here ... The population of the station settlement began to grow. A fire brigade appeared here, and with it in 1906 a public library was organized - the first cultural institution of the future city. It is probably no coincidence that in the same year the spiritual life of the district received organizational formalization. In 1904, a stone church was erected next to Tolstoy in the name of Archangel Michael, thereby turning the owner's estate into a village. Probably, the Archangel temple was attached to one of the nearest villages for some time. However, already on May 4 (May 17 - according to the New Style), 1906, the decree of the Holy Government Synod No. 5650 was issued, which stated: The clergy of the newly opened parish was attributed exclusively to refined local funds. Thus began the life of the parish of the village of Tolstoy and the Dorogobuzh station. Now the heir to the church of the village of Tolstoy is the St. Vladimir Church located in its place. Fortunately, history has preserved for us the name of the builder of the Archangel Michael Church. He was one of the most famous Russian architects and engineers, Professor Vasily Gerasimovich Zalessky. He was a nobleman, but initially his family belonged to the clergy and had been known in the Smolensk region since the 18th century. Natives of this clan entered the civil and military service and, having reached high ranks and ranks, complained of noble dignity. Vasily Gerasimovich Zalessky since 1876 served as a city architect at the Moscow City Council and erected most of his buildings in Moscow. He built both factory buildings, and public houses, and private mansions. Probably, the most famous of his buildings is the house of the sugar producer P.I. Kharitonenko on Sofiyskaya embankment, which now houses the residence of the British ambassador. The interiors of this building were decorated by Fyodor Shekhtel in the eclectic style. Vasily Gerasimovich was a leading specialist in Russia in ventilation and heating. He had his own office, engaged in work in this area. Zalessky led a great teaching activity, published a popular textbook on building architecture. He was a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Society of Architects, a member of the Moscow Architectural Society, headed the Moscow branch of the Society of Civil Engineers. IN late XIX century, VG Zalessky acquired a small estate of 127 acres in the Dorogobuzh district with the village of Shishkin. It was picturesquely located on the bank of the river Vopets. Now Shishkino is the northern outskirts of the city of Safonov. The estate was bought by Zalessky as a dacha. Despite the fact that Shishkino was for Vasily Gerasimovich a place of rest from his extensive professional activities, he did not stay away from the life of the local district. At the request of the chairman of the Dorogobuzh district assembly, Prince V.M. Urusov, Zalessky drew up free plans and estimates for the construction of zemstvo primary schools with one and two classrooms. Two versts from Shishkin, in the village of Aleshino, the Dorogobuzh Zemstvo began to create a large hospital. In 1909, Vasily Zalessky undertook to be the trustee of this hospital under construction, and in 1911 he offered to equip it with central heating at his own expense. At the same time, the Zemstvo asked him to "take part in supervising the construction of a hospital in Alyoshin." VG Zalessky was an honorary trustee of the Dorogobuzh station fire brigade and a donor of books for its public library. It is curious that in addition to the Michael-Arkhangelsk church in the village of Tolstoy, V.G. Zalessky is also related to the Smolensk Assumption Cathedral. According to his relatives, he arranged central heating there. Soon after the opening of the parish in the village of Tolstoy, a parochial school appeared, which had its own building. The first mention of it dates back to 1909. The current St. Vladimir Safonov Church is famous for its excellent church choir. A remarkable fact is that a century ago the same glorious choir was in the church of the village of Tolstoy. In 1909, in an article in the Smolensk Diocesan Gazette dedicated to the consecration of the newly built large nine-domed church in the village of Neelova, it was reported that during the solemn service, the singing choir from the Dorogobuzh station sang beautifully. Michael the Archangel Church, like any newly built church, did not have ancient icons and was probably quite modest in its interior decoration. In any case, the rector of the temple in 1924 noted that only two icons had any artistic value - the Mother of God and the Savior. Currently, the name of only one rector of the temple is known. From December 1, 1915, and at least until 1924, he was Father Nikolai Morozov. He probably served in the Tolstoy Church in subsequent years as well. In 1934, the temple of the village of Tolstoy was closed by the decree of the Smolensk Regional Executive Committee No. 2339 and was used as a warehouse for high-quality grain. During the Great Patriotic War, the church building was destroyed, and only in 1991, according to the only surviving photograph, the ruined church was rebuilt through the efforts of its rector, Father Anthony Mezentsev, who now heads the community of the Boldin Monastery in the rank of archimandrite. So the first temple of Safonov completed the circle of its life, in some way repeating the path of the Savior: from crucifixion and death for the faith to resurrection by Divine Providence. Let this miracle of rebirth from the ashes of the destroyed Safonov shrine become for the inhabitants of the city a vivid example of the creative power of the human spirit and the faith of Christ.

A variety of methods for studying the composition and technology of ancient materials becomes difficult to see. Let us briefly consider the methods that are most widely known and tested.

The choice of one or another method of studying the composition of ancient objects is dictated by historical and archaeological problems. In general, there are not many such problems, but they can be solved by different means.

Metal in the form of alloys, ceramics and fabrics are the first artificial materials consciously created by man. Such materials do not exist in nature. The creation of metal alloys, ceramics and fabrics marked a qualitatively new stage in technology: the transition from the appropriation and adaptation of natural materials to the manufacture of artificial materials with predetermined properties.

When studying the composition of ancient materials, as a rule, the following questions are meant. Was this item made locally or far from the place of discovery? If far away, is it possible to indicate the place where it was made? Is the composition of the material, such as an alloy of some metals, intentional or accidental? What was the technology of this or that production process? What was the level of labor productivity when using this or that technique for processing stone, bone, wood, metal, ceramics, glass, etc.? For what purpose were these tools used? These and other similar questions can be answered based mainly on two types of research: the analysis of matter and the physical modeling of ancient technological processes.

SUBSTANCE ANALYSIS

The most accurate of the traditional methods of substance analysis is chemical analysis. The test substance is processed in various solutions, in which certain constituent elements precipitate. The precipitate is then calcined and weighed. For such an analysis, a sample of at least 2 g is needed. It is clear that such a sample cannot be separated from every object without destroying it. Chemical analysis is very time consuming, and an archaeologist needs to know the composition of hundreds and thousands of objects. In addition, a number of elements present in this subject in
trace amounts, it is practically not determined by chemical means.

Optical spectral analysis. If a small amount of a substance of 15-20 mg is burned in the flame of a voltaic arc and, passing the light of this arc through a prism, then projecting it onto a photographic plate, then the spectrum will be recorded on the developed plate. In this spectrum, each chemical element has its strictly defined place. The greater its concentration in a given subject, the more intense will be the spectral line of this element. The intensity of the line determines the concentration of the element in the burnt sample. Spectral analysis allows you to capture very small impurities, on the order of 0.01%, which is very important for some questions facing the archaeologist. Of course, only the most general principle of spectral analysis is presented here. Its practical implementation is carried out with the help of special equipment and requires certain skills. Instruments for spectral analysis are commercially available. The analysis technique is not so complicated, and if desired, the archaeologist masters it in a fairly short time. At the same time, a very unproductive intermediate link is excluded, when an archaeologist who is not well versed in the technique of analysis must explain his tasks to a geologist who is poorly versed in archeological issues. Therefore, the ideal situation seems to be when a professional spectator working in a scientific team of archaeologists becomes so accustomed to archaeological problems that he himself can formulate tasks for studying the composition of ancient materials.

Spectral analysis of archaeological finds has yielded many interesting results.

Ancient bronze. The most important studies with the help of spectral analysis relate to the origin and distribution of the ancient metallurgy of copper and bronze. They made it possible to move from approximate visual assessments (copper, bronze) to precise quantitative characteristics of the alloy components and to the identification of various types of copper-based alloys.

Until relatively recently, it was believed that the metallurgy of copper and bronze originates from Mesopotamia, Egypt and southern Iran, where it has been known since the 4th millennium BC. e. The mass production of analyzes of bronze objects made it possible to raise the question not about regions, but about specific ancient mine workings, to which certain types of alloys can be “attached” with a certain probability. Ore from each deposit has a specific set of microimpurities inherent only to this deposit. When ore is smelted, the composition and amount of these impurities may vary somewhat, but can be accounted for. Thus, it is possible to obtain certain "marks" that characterize the features of the metals of a particular deposit or group of deposits, mining centers. The characteristics of such mining centers as the Balkan-Carpathian, Caucasian, Ural, Kazakhstan, Central Asian are well known.

At present, the oldest traces of smelting and processing of copper and lead products have been found in Asia Minor (Chatal-Khuyuk, Hadjilar, Cheyyunyu-Tepesi, etc.). They date back at least a thousand years to similar finds from Mesopotamia and Egypt.

An analysis of materials obtained during excavations at the oldest copper mine in Europe, Ai-Bunar (on the territory of modern Bulgaria), showed that already in the 4th millennium BC. Europe had its own source of copper. Bronze products were made from ores mined in the Carpathians, the Balkans and the Alps.

Based on a statistical analysis of the composition of ancient bronze objects, it was possible to establish the main directions of the evolution of the bronze technology itself. Tin bronze appeared in most mining and metallurgical centers far from immediately. It was preceded by arsenic bronze. Alloys of copper with arsenic could be natural. Arsenic is present in a number of copper ores and partially transforms into metal during smelting. It was believed that the admixture of arsenic degrades the quality of bronze. Thanks to mass spectral analysis of bronze objects, it was possible to establish a curious pattern. Items intended for use under conditions of strong mechanical stress (heads of spears, arrows, knives, sickles, etc.) had an admixture of arsenic in the range of 3-8%. Items that were not supposed to experience any mechanical stress during use (buttons, plaques and other decorations) had an admixture of arsenic 8-15%. In certain concentrations (up to 8%), arsenic plays the role of an alloying additive: it gives bronze high strength, although the appearance of such a metal is nondescript. If the concentration of arsenic is increased above 8-10%, bronze loses its strength properties, but acquires a beautiful silver hue. In addition, at a high concentration of arsenic, the metal becomes more fusible and fills all the recesses of the mold well, which cannot be said about viscous, rapidly cooling copper. The fluidity of the metal is important when casting complex-shaped jewelry. Thus, indisputable evidence was obtained that the ancient masters knew the properties of bronze and were able to obtain metal with predetermined properties (Fig. 39). Of course, this took place under conditions that have nothing to do with our ideas about metallurgical production with its exact recipes, express analyzes, etc. For all ancient peoples, blacksmithing was fanned with an aura of magic and mystery. Throwing bright red realgar stones or golden-orange pieces of orpiment containing significant concentrations of arsenic into the smelting furnace, the ancient metallurgist most likely realized this as some kind of magical action with "magic" stones that have a revered red color. The experience of generations and intuition prompted the ancient master what additives and in what quantities are needed in the manufacture of things intended for various purposes.

In a number of regions where there were no reserves of arsenic or tin, bronze was obtained in the form of an alloy of copper with antimony. Thanks to spectral analysis, it was possible to establish that even at the turn of our era, Central Asian craftsmen were able to obtain such an alloy, which in composition and properties was very close to modern brass. So, among the items found during the excavations of the Tulkhar burial ground (2nd century BC - 1st century AD, South Tajikistan), there were many earrings, buckles, bracelets and other brass items.

A spectral analysis of a large number of bronze items from the Scythian monuments of Eastern Europe indicated that the recipe for Scythian bronze alloys does not trace continuity from previous cultures of the Late Bronze Age of this region. At the same time, there are things here whose composition of alloys is similar in composition of concentrations to the alloys of the eastern regions (Southern Siberia and Central Asia). This serves as an additional argument in favor of the hypothesis about the eastern origin of the culture of the Scythian type.

With the help of spectral analysis, it is possible to study the nature of propagation in time and space not only of bronze, but also of other materials. In particular, successful experience exists in the study of the distribution of flint in the Neolithic, as well as glass and ceramics in various historical periods.

In recent years, in the practice of archaeological research, the role of modern, and for archeology - new methods of research has increased.

stable isotopes. Just as the microimpurities mentioned above in ancient metals, flint, ceramics and other materials are natural markers, a kind of "passport", in a number of cases the ratio of stable, i.e. non-radioactive, isotopes in some substances plays approximately the same role.

On the territory of Attica and on the islands of the Aegean Sea, during excavations of monuments of the Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age (IV-III millennium BC), silver items are found. During the excavations by Schliemann of the Mycenaean shaft tombs (XVI century BC), silver objects of clearly Egyptian origin were found. These and other observations, in particular the well-known ancient silver mines in Spain and Asia Minor, became the basis for the conclusion that the ancient inhabitants of Attica did not mine their silver, but imported it from these centers. This opinion was generally accepted in Western European archeology until very recently.

In the mid-70s, a group of English and German physicists and archaeologists began a series of studies of ancient mines in Lavrion (near Athens) and on the islands of Sifnos, Naxos, Siroe, and others. The physical basis of the study was as follows. Due to the imperfection of cleaning methods, ancient silver products contain lead impurities. Lead has four stable isotopes with atomic weights of 204, 206, 207 and 208. After smelting from the ore, the isotopic composition of lead originating from this deposit remains constant and does not change during hot and cold working, from corrosion or alloying with other metals. The ratio of isotopes in a given sample is recorded with great accuracy by a special device - a mass spectrometer. By ascertaining the isotopic composition of samples of various ores originating from certain mines, and then comparing their isotopic composition with samples of silver items, one can pinpoint the exact source of the metal for each item.

Ancient mines were exploited for centuries and millennia, and in this case it was important to know which of the surveyed more than 30 ancient deposits of silver-lead minerals were mined in the Bronze Age. According to C14 and thermoluminescence of ceramics, it was possible to date individual workings dating back to the end of the 4th-3rd millennium BC. e. Then samples of ores from these workings were subjected to a mass spectroscopic study for lead. Lead isotope ratios in samples from different ancient workings were distributed over non-overlapping areas, indicating "marks" inherent in each deposit (Fig. 50). Then the ratio of isotopes in the silver objects themselves was analyzed. The results were unexpected. All things were made from local silver, either from Lavrion or from island mines, mainly from the island of Sifnos. As for the Egyptian silver objects found in Mycenae, they were made from silver mined in Lavrion, taken to Egypt. Things made in Egypt from Athenian silver were brought to Mycenae.

A similar problem was considered for identifying marble objects with marble sources. This question is important from different angles. Works of Greek sculpture or architectural details made of marble are found at a great distance from mainland Greece. Sometimes it is very important to answer the question of what kind of marble, local or imported from Greece, the sculpture was made, or the capital of the column, or some other object. Museum collections include modern forgeries imitating antiquity. They need to be identified. The sources of marble for a particular structure need to be known to restorers, etc.

The physical basis is the same: mass spectrometry of stable isotopes, but instead of lead, the ratio of isotopes of carbon, 2C and 13C and oxygen, 80 and 160, is measured.
The main deposits of marble in ancient Greece were on the mainland (mountains Pentelikon and Gimettus near Athens) and on the islands of Naxos and Paros. It is known that the Parian marble quarries, or rather mines, are the most ancient. Measurements of marble samples from quarries and measurements of samples from ancient sculptures (non-destructive analysis: a sample of tens of milligrams is required) and architectural details made it possible to link them together (Fig. 51).

Similar results can be obtained by conventional, petrographic or chemical analysis. For example, it was found that samples of Gandharian sculpture, stored in the museums of Taxila, Lahore, Karachi, London, are made of stone mined from a quarry in the Swat Valley in Pakistan, in the Mardai district near the Takht-i-Bahi monastery. However, analysis on a mass spectrometer is more accurate and less time consuming.

Neutron activation analysis (NAA). Neutron activation analysis is perhaps the most powerful and efficient means of determining the chemical composition of an object from a long range of elements at once. In addition, it is a non-destructive analysis. Its physical essence is

Rice. 51. Comparison of marble samples from architectural details and sculptures with samples from quarries:
1 - the island of Naxos; 2 - the island of Paros; 3 - Mount Pentelikon; 4 - Mount Gimmettus; 5 - samples from monuments

that when any substance is irradiated with neutrons, the reaction of radiative capture of neutrons by the nuclei of the substance occurs. As a result, self-radiation of excited nuclei occurs, and each chemical element has its own energy and has its own specific place in the energy spectrum. In addition, the greater the concentration of a given element in a substance, the more energy is emitted in the region of the spectrum of this element. Outwardly, the situation is similar to what we observed when considering the basics of optical spectral analysis: each element has its own place in the spectrum, and the degree of blackening of the photographic plate in a given place depends on the concentration of the element. Unlike other neutron activation analysis, it has a very high sensitivity: it captures millionths of a percent.

In 1967, the Art Museum of the University of Michigan (USA) hosted an exhibition of Sasanian silver, which brought together objects from various museums and private collections. Basically, these were silver dishes with chased images of various scenes: Sasanian kings on the hunt, at feasts, epic heroes, etc.). Experts suspected that among the authentic masterpieces of Sasanian toreutics there are modern fakes. Neutron-activation analysis showed that more than half of the exhibits were made of modern silver of such a refined composition, which was unattainable in antiquity. But this is, so to speak, a crude fake, and such a fake is now very easy to detect by chemical composition. But among the objects of this exhibition there were dishes that, although they differed from the authentic ones in their chemical composition, but not so much as to be recognized as fakes on this basis alone. Experts believe that in this case it is impossible to exclude a more sophisticated forgery. For the manufacture of the dish itself, scrap of ancient silver could be used. Moreover, even individual overhead chased details could be genuine, and the rest of the composition could be skillfully forged. This is indicated by some stylistic and iconographic subtleties, visible only to the experienced eye of a professional art critic or archaeologist. An important conclusion for the archaeologist follows from this example: any, the most perfect physical and chemical analysis must be combined with cultural-historical and archaeological research.

The method of neutron activation solves archaeological problems of different levels. For example, a deposit has been established in which huge monoliths of ferruginous quartzite were mined for the manufacture giant statues(15 m height) of the temple complex of Amenhotep III in Thebes (XV century BC). There were several deposits under suspicion, located at different distances from the complex: approximately from 100 to 600 km. Based on the concentration of some elements, especially the extremely low content of europium (1-10%), it was possible to establish that the monoliths for the statues were delivered from the most remote quarry, where quartzite was mined with a sufficiently homogeneous structure suitable for processing.

For all its temptation, the method of neutron activation cannot yet be considered generally accessible to an archaeologist, the same as, for example, spectral analysis or metallography. In order to obtain the energy spectrum of a substance, it must be irradiated in a nuclear reactor, and this is not very accessible, and it is also expensive. When it comes to verifying the authenticity of a masterpiece, this is a one-act study, and in this case, as a rule, the costs of examination are not taken into account. But if an archaeologist needs to analyze hundreds or thousands of samples of ancient bronze, ceramics, silicon and other materials to solve ordinary current scientific problems, the neutron activation method turns out to be too expensive.

STRUCTURE ANALYSIS

Metallography. An archaeologist often has questions about the quality of metal products, their mechanical properties, and about the methods of their manufacture and processing (casting in an open or closed mold, with fast or slow cooling, hot or cold forging, welding, carburizing, etc.). The answers to these questions are given by metallographic research methods. They are very diverse and not always easily accessible. At the same time, quite satisfactory results in various fields of archeology have been obtained by a relatively simple method.
microscopic study of thin sections. After some training, this method can be mastered by the archaeologist himself. Its essence lies in the fact that various methods of processing iron, bronze and other metals leave their "traces" in the structure of the metal. The polished section of a metal product is placed under a microscope and the technique of its manufacture or processing is determined by distinguishable "traces".

Important results have been obtained in the field of metallurgy and the processing of iron and steel. In the Hallstatt time, the basic skills of plastic processing of iron appeared in Europe, rare attempts to manufacture steel blades by carburizing iron and hardening it. The imitation of bronze objects in form is clearly visible, just as at one time bronze axes inherited the shape of stone ones. A metallographic study of iron products of the subsequent La Tène period showed that at that time the technology of steel production was already fully mastered, including rather complex methods for obtaining welded blades with a high quality of the cutting surface. Recipes for the manufacture of steel products practically without any changes passed through the entire Roman time and had a certain influence on the level of blacksmithing in early medieval Europe.

The Scythian-Sarmatian cultures of Eastern Europe, synchronous to the Late Hallstatt and La Tène, also possessed many secrets of steel production. This is shown by a series of works by Ukrainian archaeologists who widely used metallographic methods.
The metallographic analysis of copper products from the Trypillia culture made it possible to establish the sequence of improving the technology of copper processing for a long time. At first it was the forging of native copper or metallurgical copper, smelted from pure oxide minerals. The early Trypillian masters, apparently, did not know the technology of casting, but they achieved great success in the technique of forging and welding. Casting with additional forging of working parts appears only in the late Trypillia time. Meanwhile, the southwestern neighbors of the early Trypillians - the tribes of the Karanovo VI culture - Gumelnitsa already owned various methods of casting in open and closed molds.

Of course, the most significant results are obtained by combining metallographic studies with other methods of analysis: spectral, chemical, X-ray diffraction, etc.

Petrographic analysis of stone and ceramics. Petrographic analysis is close in its technique to metallographic analysis. The initial object of analysis in both cases is a thin section, i.e., a polished section of an object or its sample, placed under a microscope. The structure of this rock is clearly visible under a microscope. According to the nature, size, number of different grains of certain minerals, the characteristics of the studied material are determined, according to which it can be "tied" to a particular deposit. It's about the stone. Thin sections obtained from ceramics make it possible to determine the mineralogical composition and microstructure of clay, and parallel analysis of clay from supposed ancient quarries allows identifying a product with raw materials.

When referring to petrographic analysis, it is necessary to clearly formulate the questions that the archaeologist wants to get an answer to. Petrographic research is quite laborious. It requires the manufacture and study of a sufficiently large number of thin sections, which is not cheap. Therefore, such studies, as well as all the others, are not done “just in case”. We need a clear statement of the question, which they want to get an answer with the help of petrographic analysis.

For example, during the petrographic study of Neolithic tools found in sites and in graves in the lower reaches of the Tom River and in the Chulym basin, specific questions were posed: did the inhabitants of these microdistricts use raw materials from local sources or from remote ones? Was there an exchange of stone products between them? The analysis was carried out on more than 300 thin sections taken from various stone tools from stone deposits in the area. The study of thin sections showed that approximately two thirds of the total number of stone tools were made from local raw materials (silicified siltstones). Some abrasive tools are made from local rocks of sandstone and shale. At the same time, individual adzes, chippers and other items were made from rocks that had deposits on the Yenisei and in the Kuznetsk Ala-Tau (serpentine, jasper-like silicite, etc.). Based on these facts, it could be concluded that the bulk of the tools were made from local raw materials, and the exchange was insignificant. Answers to such questions can also be obtained by other methods, for example, by spectral or neutron activation methods.

Unlike the inhabitants of the valleys of the rivers Tom and Chulym, the Neolithic tribes of Asia Minor actively exchanged tools or blanks made of obsidian. This was established using spectral analysis of the tools themselves and samples of obsidian deposits, which clearly differed from each other in the concentration of elements such as barium and zirconium.

The analysis of the structure of ancient materials should also include the study of fabrics, leather, wood products, which makes it possible to identify special technological methods inherent in a given culture or period. For example, the study of fabrics found during the excavations of Noin-Ula, Pazyryk, Arzhan, Moshcheva Balka and other sites made it possible to establish the ways of ancient economic and cultural ties with very remote regions.

EXPERIMENTAL SIMULATION OF ANCIENT TECHNOLOGIES

The analysis of matter and structure allows you to learn about the composition and technology of ancient materials and answer various questions of a cultural and historical nature. However, an integrated approach, a combination with other methods, is also needed here. The greatest completeness of understanding of many production processes is achieved by means and methods of physical modeling of ancient technologies. This direction in archeology is now widely used under the name "experimental archeology".

Along with archaeological expeditions that excavate ancient monuments, in recent years, completely unusual archaeological expeditions have been organized at universities and scientific institutions of the USSR, Poland, Austria, Denmark, England, the USA and other countries. Their main goal is to find out in practice, by experience, certain problems of reconstructing the way of life and the level of technology of ancient collectives. Students and graduate students, professors and scientists make stone axes, cut poles and logs with them, build dwellings and pens for livestock, exact similarities of dwellings and other structures studied during excavations. They live in such dwellings, using only those tools and means of labor that existed in antiquity, molding and firing pottery, melting metal, cultivating arable land, raising livestock, etc. All this is recorded in detail, analyzed and generalized. The results are interesting and sometimes unexpected. The work of S. A. Semenov and his students made it possible to put hypotheses about the level of labor productivity in primitive communities under strict control of the experiment. Labor productivity is one of the main measures of progress in all periods of history. The ideas of scientists about labor productivity in the Stone Age were very speculative. In old textbooks, you can find the phrase that the Indians polished a stone ax for so long that sometimes a whole life was not enough for it. S. A. Semenov showed that, depending on the hardness of the stone, this operation took from 3 to 25 hours. It turned out that in terms of performance, the Trypillia sickle made of flint inserts is only slightly inferior to the modern iron sickle. Inhabitants of the Trypillia village could harvest the grain crop per hectare in about three daylight hours.

Experimental smelting of bronze and iron made it possible to understand in more detail a number of "secrets" of the ancient masters, to make sure that some technological methods and skills of casters and blacksmiths were not in vain fanned with a halo of magic. Soviet, Czech and German archaeologists tried many times to get a kritsa from sponge iron smelted in a raw-hearth forge, but there was no stable result. Experimental smelting of copper-tin ore from ancient workings in the Fann Mountains (Tajikistan) showed that in some cases, ancient casters were engaged not so much in the selection of alloy components as in the use of ores with natural associations of different metals. It is possible that Bactrian brasses are also the result of the use of a special ore with a natural composition of copper-tin-zinc-lead.

On this day:

Birthdays 1936 Was born Boris Nikolaevich Mozolevsky- Ukrainian archaeologist and writer, candidate historical sciences, widely known as a researcher of Scythian funerary monuments and the author of the discovery of a golden pectoral from a mound thick grave. Days of Death 1925 Died Robert Koldewey- German architect, architectural historian, teacher and archaeologist, one of the largest German archaeologists involved in Middle Eastern archeology. Identified the place and, with the help of excavations lasting from 1898-1899 to 1917, confirmed the existence of the legendary Babylon. 2000 He died - a famous Soviet historian, archaeologist and ethnographer, Muscovite. The first head of the Moscow archaeological expedition (1946-1951). Doctor of Historical Sciences. Laureate State Prize Russian Federation (1992).