Smoke Screens and Gas Masks: Chemistry Goes to War

Smoke Screens and Gas Masks: Chemistry Goes to War — page 3
SWORDS AND BLADES One of the first uses of chemistry in warfare was to make bladed weapons The process depended on being able to heat and shape metals Fhe earliest weapons were I made from stone or flint In the fourth millennium BCE people learned to forge bronze They used the new metal to make sharper blades for weapons The stronger bronze blades and arrowheads gave armies an advantage Ancient peoples such as Egyptians supplied their armies with bronze swords and axes as well as spears and arrows Bronze was quite soft however Over time bronze blades bent or grew dull In about 1300 BCE people learned to achieve very high temperatures in furnaces That allowed them to extract iron from iron ore Early chemists learned to melt metals at very high temperatures Liquid metals could be poured molds into