:=\I figured it must be pretty long under ideal conditions. But how do projections look for say 100 years, 1000 years, 10000 years, 100000 years, million?
Say in a quartz tube with inert gas. A small spring like the kind that might be in a larger watch (like a large pocket watch)?
And how does the material look after that. For instance if you have a helix spring that is extended between two posts, laying on the surface for minimum 'hanging' tension, after say... 1 million years, if you got it and put it in a piston, would it work as a compression spring ? Like does it switch states the same way if you drew the spring out so its naturally extended vs naturally contracted? Like a spring behavior inversion without actual stretching?
Amusing to think about because you can extend a spring perfectly without hysteresis to get the perfect shape you want. If you want to actually extend it, you need to guess at how much it will deform. But if you just stretch it and wait 1 million years, you could get the perfect spring shape that you measure by initial displacement of stretching?