Iron

Position of iron in the periodic table.

Iron.

Iron is a chemical element with symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal and a very common element in Earth's crust, after only oxygen, silicon, and aluminum. It can be naturally found in small quantities in a nearly-pure form from meteorites and telluric iron. Most iron is extracted from Iron ores which are quite abundant in the Earth's crust, requiring kilns or furnaces to extract usable metal. Humans started to master that process in Eurasia around 3000 BCE with the development of the bloomery furnace. The displacement of copper alloys by iron tools and weapons is considered to mark the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. In the modern world, iron alloys, such as steel, stainless steel, cast iron and special steels, have been by far the most common industrial metals because of their mechanical properties and low cost.

See also

• Bloomery Furnace
• Copper
• Gold
• Iron Ore
• Lead
• Sponge Iron
• Steel
• Wrought Iron

References

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Iron, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).

External links

• Iron Prills - primitivetechnology.wordpress.com, 17 August 2018
• Primitive Technology: Iron prills - Primitive Technology, 17 August 2018, YouTube