THE CITY OF MATERIALS

Jordan Steel stared out the window of the family car. His eyes driftedback and forth between the tree-lined highway and the clouds in thesky. His head rested back against the headrest of the car. It seemed asif he had been in the car for years.

The summer had been winding to a close when Jordan and hisfamily had started their trip to the City of Materials. It was late Augustand still hot and humid when they arrived in their new hometown.

The City of Materials was set in a small valley surrounded bywooded hills in northeastern Ohio, about an hour east of Cleveland.It was very different from the near-desert conditions Jordan wasaccustomed to in Southern California. He had never seen so muchgreen grass and so many trees in his entire life. And it wasn't just thenumber of trees that amazed him but the variety, each with its owndifferent shade of green and leaf shape. The northeast corner of Ohiowas a very green and lush area with many old forests that dated backto before the Europeans had come to settle North America.

It had taken Jordan and his family a week to drive from SouthernCalifornia to northeast Ohio. The trip was long but fun, as the Steelfamily loved to travel in the car and had spent many trips exploringCalifornia this way. In the car with Jordan were his parents, Dante andEmily, and Joshua, his three-year-old brother. The final leg of theirjourney was to cross over the bridge in the southern part of the Cityof Materials.

"Remember what I told you about this bridge, Jordan?" askedDante.

Jordan remembered. This was the second bridge to be built acrossthe river to the City of Materials. The original bridge was built in theearly 1940s, using a slender ribbon bridge deck design, which wasinfluenced by the "streamlining" design approach that was popularat that time and had been applied to everything from teakettles tolocomotives, resulting in designs that are still admired today.

Unfortunately, the original bridge wasn't stable in the high windsthat sometimes occurred along the river that passed the City ofMaterials. The bridge's slender design acted like an airplane wing,which caused the roadbed to lift in the high winds and then twist asgravity brought it back down. Even during construction, the bridge wasseen to wiggle in the winds, and a local boy named William, who woulddance in time with the bridge, had earned the bridge the nickname"Wiggling William" from the local townspeople. The designer hadmade three separate and distinct efforts to dampen the movementsof the bridge, but all three efforts had failed. Within two months ofits opening, the bridge had collapsed in a spectacular fashion. Luckily,no loss of life had resulted, as the bridge slowly increased its wigglingover a period of hours, giving everyone time to get off the bridge.

A few years later, a new bridge had been built that wasn't slenderbut had a larger, more traditional structure under the roadbed. Itstood up to the winds and was still in use today.

"Hey, Jordan, what's this stuff on the bridge—the stuff that coversthe metal?" asked Emily.

Jordan sat up in the backseat and looked hard at the bridge as itsped past his window. The bridge was a gray color, and at first, Jordanthought that the gray was the color of the metal. As he looked harder,he saw that the "color" was chipping off in many spots. Jordan smiled."It's paint."

"That's correct," Dante said. "Can you tell me why the bridge ispainted?"

"Hmm ..." said Jordan. "I don't know."

"It's the same reason that we paint cars and pipes and many otherproducts made from carbon steel," Dante mentioned as a clue.

Jordan thought for a moment, and then his face lit up. Dante andEmily smiled together as the answer dawned on their son.

"The bridge is painted to stop corrosion," Jordan said proudly in aloud voice.

"Absolutely 100 percent correct," said Dante. "Did you know thatthe United States produces millions of tons of structural carbon steelevery year?" he added. "In 2008, the United States produced 91.4million metric tons, and the world production was 1,326.5 millionmetric tons. Most of the structures we see every day are made fromcarbon steel, but the steel will corrode if not protected. Painting is oneof the most common methods to protect carbon steel structures fromcorrosion.

"Say, Jordan, do you ever recall seeing another bridge that waspainted a spectacular color, like a bright orange?" Dante asked.

Jordan thought for a second and then remembered that thefamous Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, was paintedan orange color. Jordan had seen the bridge up close a few years agowhen the family visited San Francisco.

"Remember what we learned about the bridge and how pretty it isin the sunlight, Jordan?" asked Emily.

Jordan thought back to the tour guide who had spoken to hisfamily about the bridge. The Golden Gate referred to the GoldenGate Strait, a name that originated around 1846. The bridge's mainsuspension span was 4,200 feet long—a world record that stoodfor twenty-seven years. It was still the second longest in the UnitedStates, with the longest bridge being the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge,which linked Staten Island to Brooklyn.

Jordan remembered that the two towers of the Golden GateBridge were 746 feet tall, which made them 191 feet taller than theWashington Monument. As they'd driven under the two towers,Jordan had thought they looked like two orange "Iron Giants." Thefive-lane bridge that crossed the Golden Gate Strait was about 1.7miles long and used simple yellow markers to switch the center laneso that three lanes of cars travel into San Francisco for the morningcommute and three lanes of cars leave the City in the afternoon andevening. Jordan had always thought this was a cool way to create a"changeable" carpool lane.

Dante interrupted Jordan's memories. "You know, in comparisonto structural carbon steel, the United States' production of stainlesssteel was 2.3 million metric tons in 2008, and the world production ofstainless steel was 25.9 million metric tons. That means that stainlesssteel is only about 2 percent of the amount of structural carbon steelproduced in the United States and the world."

"Hey, Jordan, what's this stuff—stainless steel?" asked Dante.

Jordan rolled his eyes. "Not again, Dad." Then, in a very roboticand well-rehearsed voice, he continued, "The advantage ofstainless steel is that it's corrosion resistant and doesn't need thesame corrosion protection required by structural carbon steels.The downside of stainless steel is its cost. The inherent corrosionresistance is due to the fact that it has a minimum of 11 percentchromium content by weight. The chrome content and other...