Qin Jun soldiers' weapons.
On those heroic terracotta warriors and horses, we seem to really feel the majestic momentum of Qin Jun more than 2,000 years ago. In the era of cold weapons, the two major elements of war are the army and weapons. Judging from some weapons on display, it is not difficult to find that the victory of weapons is one of the necessary factors for Qin to unify the six countries and attack the city and plunder the land. Most of the weapons unearthed in the pit of Qin terracotta warriors and horses are bronze weapons, reaching more than 40 thousand pieces. The number of iron weapons is very small. Only 1 iron spear, 1 iron arrow, 2 iron collar. The unearthed iron weapons only account for one tenth of the total unearthed weapons in the figurine pit. This shows that although iron has been widely used in agricultural production since the middle and late Warring States period, due to the high requirements for iron in weapons, according to the level of iron smelting at that time, it is still in the stage of block ironmaking and green cast iron, and the hardness and strength of these two kinds of iron are not enough, which is not suitable for large-scale manufacturing of weapons. Bronze was widely used at that time, so the Qin people used a large number of bronze weapons with increased alloy ratio, which pushed the bronze smelting process in China to a new milestone. Both the quality and productivity of weapons have been greatly improved compared with the previous generation, including almost all kinds of weapons prevailing at that time, including the common ge, spear, halberd, sword, crossbow, hammer, cymbal, copper cymbal, and the long beryllium gold (weapon) hook discovered for the first time. Some weapons have complete inscriptions. According to their functions, they can be divided into three categories: the first category is short weapons, including swords and gold hooks; The second category is long-handled weapons, including spears, spears, halberds, cymbals, scorpions, beryllium and so on. The third category is long-range weapons, such as crossbows and bows. These weapons are all cast. Their main components are copper, tin and lead, as well as trace elements such as nickel, magnesium, aluminum, zinc, iron, silicon, manganese and titanium. In the long-term bronze smelting practice, the ancients intuitively understood the relationship between alloy composition, properties and uses, and summarized the law of "six gases". The so-called "six vessels" are six different copper-tin ratios used in six different bronzes. In this respect, the description of "Six Qi" in Kao Gong Ji written by Qi people at the end of the Warring States Period is the earliest scientific summary of alloy proportioning law in the world. For the first time, human beings have obtained alloy materials with different properties and suitable for different purposes by consciously controlling the composition ratio of copper and tin. From the analysis of the alloy proportion of various bronze weapons of the unearthed Terracotta Warriors and Horses, it is basically consistent with the proportion of "Six Qi" in Kao Gong Ji. Explain that Qin had learned to absorb and use the advantages of others for his own use at that time, and standardized this ratio. For example, bronze swords unearthed in the terracotta pit all contain tin 18℅-2 1℅, which is very close to the hardness of medium carbon steel after tempering. At that time, Qin Jun claimed to have millions of infantry, thousands of chariots and tens of thousands of war horses, and the number of weapons needed was extremely large, so the guarantee mechanism of weapons manufacturing was particularly important. Qin people's practice is to institutionalize weapons production, standardize molds and technological processes, and use laws to constrain them. "Eighteen Kinds of Qin Law: Commercial Law" clearly records: "Anyone who has the same thing must have the same size, short and wide." The same is true of all similar objects unearthed in the pit of Qin terracotta warriors. Such as copper crossbows in weapons, the same parts on each crossbow machine can be interchanged. For example, the head of a bronze cymbal is triangular, and the three faces and edges are processed into parabolas, which are basically equal. Experts magnified the three faces of cymbals by 20 times, and found that the errors of the three faces of the same cymbal were less than 0. 15mm, and the errors of different cymbals were less than 0.2mm, which was a very high accuracy standard. Matching with the law is the implementation of the reward and punishment method of "testing the sincerity in the name of the worker", which requires that the name of the year of production, organization, supervisor and specific producer be engraved on the weapon, so that the ingenuity of the craftsman can be fully demonstrated and affirmed. None of the weapons unearthed in the pit rusted, because there was effective rust prevention technology at that time. Experts analyzed by electron probe and laser technology that there is a chrome oxide layer on the surface of bronze weapons, which is very common in weapons, indicating that this is not caused by accidental factors, but is formed after intentional technological treatment, thus playing a good role in rust prevention, making weapons as bright as new and extremely sharp. Chromium salt oxidation technology is an advanced scientific process. There are two methods of chromium plating in the world: electronic chromium plating and chemical chromium plating. Electronic chromium plating came into being with modern industrial civilization, which was invented by Germany in 1937 and by the United States in 1950, and has been patented all over the world. However, the chemical chromium plating technology was created by working people in China more than 2000 years ago, which is a miracle in metallurgical history. It is precisely because of strict system management that the Qin Dynasty applied the most skillful bronze manufacturing technology at that time to weapons production, which provided sufficient weapons support for the Six-Nation War and created one miracle after another in the history of weapons.