The world's most famous iron molecule
The most common material in orthodontic braces tends to be stainless steel, and the principal ingredient of steel is iron. While he was in Brussels for an orthodontics course (involving titanium materials) Dr Stephen Murray from Swords Orthodontics visited the Atomium, a giant model of an iron molecule/crystal which was built in the 1950s for an international exhibition. It's a bit like the Belgian equivalent of the Eiffel Tower.
Yes, it really is THAT big.
At the practice here in Swords, we use stainless steel Damon brackets to move the teeth to an ideal position. If our brackets were made to the same scale as the iron crystal at the Atomium, one of them would be so big it would stretch from the earth to the moon and half as far again!
Dr Murray jumped off the top of the Atomium once, but that's another story.
