Iron
Latin ferrum. Iron was used prehistorically:
▸ Iron is mentioned numerous times in the Old Testament of the Bible.
▸ A remarkable iron pillar, dating to about A.D. 400, remains standing today in Delhi, India. This solid shaft of wrought iron is about 7 1/4 m high by 40 cm in diameter. Corrosion to the pillar has been minimal although it has been exposed to the weather since its creation.
The pure metal is very reactive chemically and rapidly corrodes, especially in moist air or at elevated temperatures. It has four allotropic forms or ferrites, known as alpha, beta, gamma, and omega, with transition points at 700, 928, and 1530C. The alpha form is magnetic, but when transformed into the beta form, the magnetism disappears although the lattice remains unchanged. The relations of these forms are peculiar. Pig iron is an alloy containing about 3 percent carbon with varying amounts of sulfur, silicon, manganese, and phosphorus.
Iron is hard, brittle, fairly fusible, and is used to produce other alloys, including steel. Wrought iron contains only a few tenths of a percent of carbon, is tough, malleable, less fusible, and usually has a "fibrous" structure.
Carbon steel is an alloy of iron with small amounts of Mn, S, P, and Si. Alloy steels are carbon steels with other additives such as nickel, chromium, vanadium, etc. Iron is a cheap, abundant, useful, and important metal.
Huge amounts of iron are used to make steel, an alloy of iron and carbon. Steel typically contains between 0.3% and 1.5% carbon, depending on the desired characteristics. The addition of other elements can give steel other useful properties. Small amounts of chromium improves durability and prevents rust (stainless steel); nickel increases durability and resistance to heat and acids; manganese increases strength and resistance to wear; molybdenum increases strength and resistance to heat; tungsten retains hardness at high temperatures; and vanadium increases strength and springiness. Steel is used to make paper clips, skyscrapers and everything in between.
In addition to helping build the world around us, iron helps keep plants and animals alive. Iron plays a role in the creation of chlorophyll in plants and is an essential part of hemoglobin, the substance that carries oxygen within red blood cells. Iron sulfate (FeSO4) is used to treat the blood disease anemia.
Iron is a vital constituent of plant and animal life and works as an oxygen carrier in hemoglobin.
Taconite is becoming increasingly important as a commercial ore. The pure metal is not often encountered in commerce, but is usually alloyed with carbon or other metals.
Iron is a relatively abundant element in the universe. It is found in the sun and many types of stars in considerable quantity. Its nuclei are very stable. Iron is a principal component of a meteorite class known as siderites and is a minor constituent of the other two meteorite classes. The core of the earth 2150 miles in radius is thought to be largely composed of iron with about 10 percent occluded hydrogen. The metal is the fourth most abundant element, by weight that makes up the crust of the earth.
The most common ore is hematite, which is frequently seen as black sands along beaches and banks of streams.
60Fe is an extinct radionuclide with a half-life of 2.6×106 years that has fully decayed to 60Ni since formation of the Solar System. The distribution of the product (radiogenic) 60Ni in extraterrestrial material, such as meteorites, has been used to gain insight into the early history of the Solar System [216]. Because molecules, atoms, and ions of the stable isotopes of iron possess slightly different physical and chemical properties, they commonly will be fractionated during physical, chemical, and biological processes, giving rise to variations in isotopic abundances and in atomic weights. There are measureable variations in the isotopic abundances of iron in natural terrestrial materials (Fig. IUPAC.26.1). Small variations in stable iron isotopic compositions caused by physical and chemical isotopic fractionation processes have been used to study mass transfer processes in nature and chemical equilibria [17], [216], [217].
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- Atomic Mass Data Center (AMDC), International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
- IUPAC Commission on Isotopic Abundances and Atomic Weights (CIAAW)
- Jefferson Lab, U.S. Department of EnergyLICENSEPlease see citation and linking information: https://education.jlab.org/faq/index.htmlhttps://www.jlab.org/privacy-and-security-notice
- Los Alamos National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy
- NIST Physical Measurement Laboratory
- IUPAC Periodic Table of the Elements and Isotopes (IPTEI)LICENSECopyright (c) 2020 International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) contribution within Pubchem is provided under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, unless otherwise stated.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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