Galvanizing

The process of coating iron or steel with zinc, most commonly by immersion in a bath of molten zinc, to protect the base metal from corrosion. It works by sacrificial (cathodic) protection: because zinc is more chemically reactive than iron, it corrodes preferentially, including at cut edges and scratches where bare steel is exposed, sparing the steel underneath far longer than a barrier coating like paint would. Notably, the process's name is a documented misnomer: it is named after Luigi Galvani, an 18th-century physician and physiologist whose actual work concerned bioelectricity, the twitching of dissected frogs' legs under electrical stimulus, and had no direct connection to zinc coating or corrosion; the modern hot-dip process was patented decades after Galvani's death by a different man entirely, Stanislas Sorel.