Iron :: essays research papers

Iron     Iron in its pure state is soft, flexible and ductile (that can bestretched, drawn or hammered minute without breaking ((Websters Dictionary, 419,1988)) with a hardness of 4-5. It is easily magnetized at direction temperatures andthis property disappears when heated above 790 degrees Celsius.. Metal compactoccurs in a free state in only a few localities, notably Greenland (Encarta,1996). One of the physical properties of cast-iron as an ore is its color which canbe black, brown or even reddish. Hematite is the most important iron ore,commonly occurs as "kidney ore" - so -called because of its shape (Symes, 1988,56). Other ores included goethite, magnetite, siderite, and slow iron (Encarta,1996). Even though iron is tough and hard it is chill out easy to work. Iron is aactive metal and will comply with halogens, carbon, etc. It has an atomicweight 55.847, its atomic number is 26, its specific sobriety is 7.86, itsmelting point is 1535 degr ees Celsius, and its boiling point is 3000 degreesCelsius. It burns in atomic number 8 forming ferrous oxide. When exposed to moist air,iron becomes corroded, forming a reddish - brown, flaky, provide ferric oxide,commonly known as rust. (Encarta, 1996)     Iron is formed in shallow seas. It comes out of the water and collectson the sea appal. This creates an underwater deposit. This make occurs overbillions of years. Through plate movement the whole sea floor is eventuallymoved up out of the water. Once out of the water, the iron has formed a landdeposit. The biggest iron deposit in the join States is in the Great Lakes.Northern Minnesota is often called the Iron Range. there are two ways irondeposits are located. In the introductory method limited machines that detects theirons magnetism are used ti incur a deposit. In the second method a savorless withspecial equipment flies over an area of land suspected of having ore depositsand shoots down phon e waves to determine if that area contains iron deposit.The waves come back up to the plane and determined by the pattern one can tellif there is an iron deposit.     In the early 1990s annual production of iron ore in the United Stateexceeded 56 million metric tons (Encarta, 1996). there are two ways in whichiron is mined. The two ways are open pit and shaft dig. Open pit mine isused 85% of the time for shallow deposits. Open pit mining is also call stripmining. The way open pit mining works is the top soil is removed with a