HowStuffWorks "How Iron and Steel Work"
[http://www.howstuffworks.com/] SUBSCRIBE Adventure Animals Auto Culture Entertainment Health Home & Garden Lifestyle Money Science Tech Video Shows Quizzes Engineering Environmental Science Forces of Nature Innovation Life Science Military Physical Science Dictionary Science Vs. Myth Space Transportation Home / Science / Engineering / Materials Science How Iron and Steel Work by Marshall Brain and Robert Lamb Page 1 Introduction to How Iron and Steel Work 2 The Advantages of Iron 3 Iron Ore 4 Creating Iron These daggers are an example of the kind of superior weaponry that Iron Age civilizations were able to craft. English School/The Bridgeman Art Gallery/ Getty Images Up Next Iron Quiz How Skyscrapers Work If you were to follow humanity's genetic trail back through the millennia, you'd find primitive creatures fumbling for a foothold on a primeval Earth . Lacking the natural, physical advantages of other animals, it's a marvel humans were able to claw their way out of the Cenozoic era at all. Of course, Homo sapiens had one advantage over all the other animals: the ability to make and use tools. While they lacked a lion's teeth and claws or a deer's defensive antlers, they learned to craft their own weapons from the world around them. The oldest known tools date back 2.6 million years, to a time when humans used shaped stone to carry out a variety of tasks [source: Encyclopaedia Britannica ]. After all, a sharpened rock can potentially slice, stab, scrape, pound and bludgeon. In time, humans began to specialize their tools, creating everything from arrowheads to pestles for grinding grain. Yet stone is a brittle, inflexible medium. Eventually, they were able to pinpoint more durable and malleable elements and their alloys: first copper, then bronze and iron. Instead of flaking or fracturing under blunt force, they proved malleable. If you had to name the technologies that had the greatest effect on modern society, the refining of the heavy metal element iron would have to be near the top. Iron makes up a huge array of modern products. especially carbon-rich, commercial iron, which we call steel . Cars , tractors, bridges, trains (and their rails), tools, skyscrapers, guns and ships all depend on iron and steel to make them strong. Iron is so important that primitive societies are measured by the point at which they learn how to refine it. This is where the "Iron Age" classification comes from. Have you ever wondered how people refine iron and steel? You've probably heard of iron ore, but how do we turn a slab of rock into a set of stainless steel surgical instruments or a locomotive? In this article, you'll learn all about iron and steel. Launch Video Print Cite This! Close Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks article: Brain, Marshall, and Robert Lamb. "How Iron and Steel Work" 01 April 2000. HowStuffWorks.com.
17 August 2014. Citation & Date Feedback Page 1 Introduction to How Iron and Steel Work 2 The Advantages of Iron 3 Iron Ore 4 Creating Iron 5 Creating Steel 6 Lots More Information More To Explore All Things Science 10 Incredible Wind Power Facts 10 Remarkable Exoplanets Fact or Fiction: Earthquakes Top 10 Things That Women Invented Strange, Spooky, Scary: The Supernatural Quiz Watch 100 Greatest Discoveries videos » You Might Also Like How Welding Works For a process that simply bonds two pieces of metal, welding affects a lot of our world and some stuff that's out of this world, like the International Space Station. What's it like to man the torch? What caused the World Trade Center towers to collapse on 9/11? It took years to construct the 110-story World Trade Center towers and less than an hour to bring them down to rubble. What ultimately caused the towers to collapse on Sept. 11, 2001? Popular Articles What was the first steel-framed skyscraper? How Smart Structures Will Work Wired NextFest: Helios Most Popular Most Watched Most Popular 10 Reasons Why Tesla Is a Scientific God Strange, Spooky, Scary: The Supernatural Quiz 10 Heaviest Objects Mankind Has Ever Moved How Hydraulic Machines Work 10 Correlations That Are Not Causations Most Watched How to Make (Almost) Everything Understanding Bridges How do they do it? Why aren't the keys on my computer in alphabetical order? The Most Important Things So Far, Seriously Don't Miss Stuff You Should Know: Demystifying Your World Stuff Mom Never Told You: All Things Women and Gender Stuff You Missed in History Class: Fact or Fiction? CHECK OUT OUR PODCASTS HOWSTUFFWORKS NEWSLETTER THE LATEST AND GREATEST SUBSCRIBE HOWSTUFFWORKS Adventure Animals Auto Culture Entertainment Health Home & Garden Lifestyle Money Science Tech MORE STUFF Blogs HSW Tools RSS Maps Podcasts Quizzes Newsletters Video HSW Brazil HSW China STUFF WEBSITES BrainStuff CarStuff Fw:Thinking Stuff Mom Never Told You Stuff of Genius Stuff They Don't Want You to Know Stuff to Blow Your Mind Stuff You Missed in History Class Stuff You Should Know CUSTOMER SERVICE Advertising Contact Us Help CORPORATE About Us Careers @ HSW Privacy Policy Visitor Agreement TAKE US WITH YOU FOLLOW US Copyright © 1998-2014 HowStuffWorks, a division of InfoSpace LLC