Iron :: essays research papers

Iron     Iron in its pure republic is soft, malleable and ductile (that can bestretched, drawn or hammered thin without pause ((Websters Dictionary, 419,1988)) with a hardness of 4-5. It is easily magnetized at room temperatures andthis property disappears when heated above 790 degrees Celsius.. Metal compressoccurs in a free state in only a few localities, notably Greenland (Encarta,1996). One of the physical properties of iron as an ore is its color which canbe black, brown or crimson ruddy. 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 bog iron (Encarta,1996). Even though iron is tough and hard it is still easy to work. Iron is aactive metal and will combine with halogens, carbon, etc. It has an atomicweight 55.847, its atomic morsel is 26, its specific gravity is 7.86, itsmelting point is 1535 degrees Celsius, and its boiling point is 3000 degreesCelsius. It burns in oxygen forming ferrous oxide. When exposed to moist air,iron be get ins corroded, forming a reddish - brown, flaky, hydrated ferric oxide,commonly known as rust. (Encarta, 1996)     Iron is make in shallow seas. It comes out of the water and collectson the sea floor. This creates an underwater deposit. This function 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 United States is in the Great Lakes.Northern Minnesota is often called the Iron Range. There are cardinal ways irondeposits are located. In the first method special machines that detects theirons magnetism are used ti find a deposit. In the succor method a plane withspecial equipment flies over an area of land suspected of having ore depositsand shoots down sound 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 mathematical product 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 mining 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