A friends of mine says he has balls of steel and i told him i would melt em off with lava. He said it wouldnt work. i disagree
some lava is hot enough to melt steel. Mostly, though, the metal would react with the lava and get eaten up that way rather than directly melting. Most lava can contain an awful lot of iron and other metals without any difficulty and are rarely saturated with those metals.
united is right! its hard to tell the temp... Because lava is not just obsidian, or pillow lava... its several different types of elements. It just depend on ground chemistry.
Standard steel melts around 1400-1500 C. Erupting lava can be as hot as 1600 C. There are various types of steel with different melting points though, and the temperature of lava varies widely, so your question can't really be answered definitively. Some lava is definitely hot enough to melt steel though, so you are right and your friend is wrong. :)
