![\"\"](\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Nickle-wShadow-NEW.jpeg\")
\nIf Mark R. Stoudt has done his job well, you’ll never notice the change.<\/p>\n
Stoudt MS \u201992, PhD \u201900 is a materials scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and a member of the small team responsible for a new alloy expected to be used for the U.S. nickel.<\/p>\n
It\u2019ll look the same. It\u2019ll feel the same. \u201cThat was the whole point of it,\u201d Stoudt says. \u201c[As a consumer], it\u2019s one of those things where you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on behind the curtain and you don\u2019t care, as long as you put your coin in the vending machine and get the bag of chips.\u201d<\/p>\n
Around 2006, the nickel started costing more to make\u2014just over 7 cents per coin\u2014than it was actually worth, triggering the hunt for a less expensive replacement alloy. That\u2019s a lot more challenging than it sounds; a striking variety of factors go into the makeup of the nickel. It has to have the right color. It needs to resist corrosion. It can\u2019t be too brittle so it cracks when it\u2019s struck, but it can\u2019t be soft enough to wear away easily. It has to have a consistent weight. It even has to have the same electrical conductivity, because that\u2019s how vending machines identify it.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Mint turned to NIST\u2019s Materials Measurement Laboratory to investigate the solution. Over the course of three years, Stoudt, metallurgist Carelyn Campbell, and materials research engineer Eric Lass used a combination of computer modeling and measurements of material properties to come up with the best possible alloy while saving 25 to 40% on the current cost of the coin. Four patents arose from the work, and in December, the group was awarded the U.S. Department of Commerce Bronze Medal.<\/p>\n
Stoudt has been with NIST since 1986, starting there shortly after earning an ASE in chemical engineering and a BSE in metallurgical engineering from Penn State. He would later attend Johns Hopkins to obtain both his MSE and PhD. \u201cI wanted to be a chemical engineer back in eighth grade,\u201d he recalls. \u201cIt\u2019s one of those things where research gets into your blood and you\u2019re trained to attack a problem a certain way, and you start acquiring skills. I\u2019m not doing anything directly related to my PhD research, but the skills I learned are applied on a daily basis.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stoudt is currently working on projects involving additive manufacturing processes, or 3-D printing. The technology \u201chas opened up areas of design space that were off-limits until a few years ago,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
But Stoudt looks back fondly on his days with the nickel. \u201cIt was fun to work on. I learned more about the interplay of these characteristics and how it relates to what I would be testing,\u201d he says. \u201cYou\u2019re always learning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mark R. Stoudt MS \u201992, PhD \u201900 is a materials scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and a member of the small team responsible for a new alloy expected to be used for the U.S. nickel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":14792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[5101],"class_list":["post-14789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","tag-mark-r-stoudt","issue-winter-2021"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n