1. Fitting the steel rims on a horsecart wheels: The wheels of a horsecar are fitted with steel rims. To ensure a tight fit, the rim is made slightly smaller in diameter than the wooden wheel. The steel rim is first heated uniformly till its diameter becomes slightly more than the wooden wheel. The rim is then slipped over the wooden wheel. On cooling, the rim contracts and make a tight fit on the wooden wheel.

2. Rivetting: When a heated solid is cooled and it is not allowed to regain its original size, large forces are developed due to contraction. This fact is utilized in rivetting the two metal plates together, for example, in joining the steel girders, in joining the boiler plates etc.
For joining the two steel plates, they are placed one above the other and holes are drilled in them. The rivets (small steel rods) are made red hot and inserted in the holes of the plates. The ends of the rivet are hammered into the head. This becomes easy because heating of rivets softens them. When the rivets cool, they force plates to come closer and firmly grip them together and thus the joints become water-proof or steam-proof.

3. Glassware used in kitchen: The glassware used in kitchen are generally made of Pyrex glass because pyrex glass has a very low coefficient of expansion, so the vessels do not crack on being heated.

4. Fusing the platinum wire in glass rod: The platinum (or nickel-iron alloy) wire is fused in glass rod, since both (platinum and glass) have nearly the same coefficient of linear expansion. If the platinum wire is fused in the rod of any other material or if the wire of any other metal is fused in the glass rod, on being cooled the rod will crack because of unequal contractions of the wire and rod.

5. Using invar: In appliances where expansion or contraction due to variation in temperature is to be kept minimum, an alloy of iron and nickel, called invar, is used since it has a negligibly small coefficient of linear expansion
= 9 x 10^-7per°C.

6. Loosening a glass stopper or a metal screw cap: A glass stopper or a metal screw cap on a bottle is loosened by warming the neck of bottle. The reason is that on warming the neck of bottle, it expands and so the glass stopper or metal screw cap in it gets loosened.