Carrie Furnace Visit

On the last full day I was in Pittsburgh, we went to the Carrie Furnace.  It's an old steel mill, closed in the 1980s, I think, that's open one or two days a week for guided tours.  It's pretty run down, but the tour is really, really interesting!

I always wondered how, in those pictures you see of giant ladles with melted metal, how come the ladles didn't melt.  And the answer, as you can see from the interior of the molten metal holder thingy here, is that everything is like with several courses of bricks.  Everything.  The furnace, the floors, the pouring stuff, everything.  The preparation of those pieces of equipment must have taken a heck of a good brickworker.

Okay, back to academic stuff next time.

It's August, and time to face the reality of the coming semester.