Also,How is molten iron produced in order to fix broken rails on a railway lines?Thanks
First answers are sort of on the right track. The most important difference is that steel represents a large family of alloys. There are many hundreds of different commercial steel alloys and any one alloy can be heat treated to produce a wide range of physical properties. The basic steel alloy is simply Fe and C but scientists have developed alloys and special treatments for different applications using many different alloying additions including B, N, Al, Si, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, Nb, and Mo to name a few. As far as fixing railroad rails. Yes, one method is thermite, a combination of iron oxide with aluminum metal. This material, once ignited, produces a lot of heat as the Al takes O away from the Fe oxide. It generates enough heat that the Fe will melt and weld the rails together.
iron is an element, denoted by Fe, its pure, and its a lot weaker than steel Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon and a few other materials, the carbon in the iron's mollecular structure makes it strong and flexible (to different degrees depending of how it was made, what amount of carbon was added yada yada) Iron is melted using a mix of very finely powdered iron oxide and aluminium . when you set fire to that mix (induce a reaction) the aluminium's higher affinity for oxygen propagates the (highly exothermic) reaction, leaving only pure (and molten) iron behind. cheers :)
Carbon. Steel is basically just iron but in steel there are many small crystals of Carbon mixed with the iron. Steel is not necessarily better in most cases, but the things that are good about steel is that Carbon has a very high melting point so steel does to. Because cystalized carbon are quite stif, if you harden steel properly it can become very hard.
