• @[email protected]
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    4 months ago

    I can’t think of many things you encounter every day that just use straight iron. Only alloys that use iron

    Meanwhile, you’ll use very pure aluminum all the time

    • @repungnant_canary
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      84 months ago

      You as a human use pure iron. But non-animate objects, yeah mostly alloys

      • @HauntedCupcake
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        124 months ago

        Uh, I hate to break it to you, but literally all the iron in the human body is either part of a protein or bound to other molecules. It’s not an alloy per se, but it isn’t exactly pure iron

    • @[email protected]
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      4 months ago

      Pure aluminium is only used when you need to have very little reactivity.

      General construction steel has >98% weight iron. Around the same as most aluminium alloys.

      • @[email protected]
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        4 months ago

        Really now? I thought most steel had way more carbon & chromium/nickel/manganese than that. I guess I underestimate how little is needed to make iron no longer mushy.

        • @[email protected]
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          34 months ago

          It is mainly only in stainless steels that have anything other than iron in high concentrations, they might have something like 30% of their weight elements other than iron

    • @[email protected]
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      4 months ago

      Sounds like aluminum is a loner and iron plays well with others. I’d bet there is still more iron encountered every day than aluminum even if the aluminum is pure and the iron is alloyed.

    • @pyre
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      24 months ago

      sounds like a good argument for iron.

    • @[email protected]
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      24 months ago

      Perhaps so, but one might argue that human tech relies more on iron than any other metal - because of its magnetic properties. We need iron to generate and manipulate electricity.