The Reference Question of the Day, or Metal Handbook to the rescue

We just had a patron come to the Information Desk asking the following:

"What is the tensile strength of carbon steel #1015?"

The answer is:

• If "as rolled," 420.6 MPa or 61.0 ksi.
• If "normalized," 424.0 MPa or 61.5 ksi.
• If "annealed," 386.1 MPa or 56.0 ksi.

The phrases in quotes are different treatments for the steel. MPa is the unit of measurement in megapascals. KSI is the unit of measurement of kilo per square inch. These are units of pressure measurement. They were not part of the question, but I had to look them up for curiosity. The answer to the question itself was in:

Boyer, Howard E. and Timothy L. Gall. Metal Handbook: Desk Edition. Metals Park, OH: American Society for Metals. 1985.

Goes to show that now and then we still have a use for the "old fashioned" reference books.