Yes, and no. (actually, primarily "no")BornThisWay wrote:The reason the L-Delay works is because typical Solder is made from Lead and Tin. Both of these metals have a good Ductility rating.
Meaning that they will stretch and deform under tension.
....
To give an example:
.999 silver is amazingly ductile, and it will stretch and deform under tension, yet it will not work in the L-delay.
You can hang a weight from the silver wire that is close to the breaking load (say 80%), and it will just hang there... and be there next week too.
What happens is about "creep".
Dislocations and defects in the crystal structure can migrate through it, making the material slowly stretch under a load that is far from the load required to break the wire in the normal sense of "apply enough load to break it"-breaking.
It is about movement of atoms in the crystal lattice and the relation between the absolute temperature and the absolute melting temperature of the alloy.
In a thicker lead bar, you can see a "stepped" deformation.
Creep is about melting point, temperature, ductility, load and time.
Lead-tin solder is ductile and low melting, meaning that it will show pronounced creep at room temperature.
That is why it is working.
This site has a very nice movie showing the creep of a 30 centimeter piece of solder ending up being more than four times as long.
The weight attached is 10% of the load that would break it the normal way.
http://www.mtu.edu/materials/k12/experiments/creep/