Very good evening. Very, very good evening, ladies and gentlemen
Very good evening to dear children
In my hands, here. I am holding an object.
And object which is made out of something, which is very, very common on our planet
However, it is not belong to this planet
You see, what's i am holding, is a piece of an iron meteorite
This iron meteorite fell in Mexico ten thousand years ago
It was It weighs three tons
And a part of it was donated, this part was donated to the Royal Institution 1794
And i am very please to be able to show you this
Now, meteorites are made of iron and we are aware of the fact that people have been using iron, meteoritic iron
for about at least ten thousand years
That's how far our records go
However, people have been using iron, which they have been making by themselves for approximately five thousand years
Now, if you don't mind, i've got to get my meteorite away, because it's very, very precious indeed
And i will come back to that later on
Now, what i want to tell you is that: iron is something which we associate with permanence
It's something which is long lasting, that meteorite is millions and millions of years old
The meteorite that, that's lines that's in Mexico, that fall around thousand of meteorites,
the Mesopotamians knew about meteorites they use
And we know, that a people use meteoritic iron, well before, they started using iron which they made themselves
Iron is associated with permanence. You go outside, what did you see?
You see lamp posts, you see bridges, you see Hammersmith Bridge, beautifully made out of iron, steel
You see the Eiffel Tower made out of steel, you see railings
Everywhere it is associated with prominence
And perhaps to tell you, that of a greatest, the most famous monument, which exists in the world today
of ancient iron craft made by humans is the Iron Pillar in Delhi, there it is
the Iron Pillar in Delhi, which is in North India, has been crafted by people 2300 years ago
It's very, very pure sample of iron and it is a mystery, it is a mystery, which i'll talk about
that this has survived for so long in view of what i am about to tell you
So, iron there is associated with permanence, with long, long  and with long lasting this
However, i wanted demonstrate you, in the next hour or so, that any nothing could be farther from the truth,
than the permanence of iron, if it is subjected to the right sorts of conditions
You see, i have here two sheets of steel. I bought this as a offcuts from a metal supply a few weeks ago
and this sheet of steel as you see is nice and shiny, as they'd expected to be
but this sheet of steel here has got a sort of something, which you are very familiar with use,
yes, it's gone rusty, it's gone rusty, it's beginning to corrode and this is not only not looking very nice
but it is actually going to fall apart over a period of time
