Iron :: essays research papers

Iron     Iron in its pure state is soft, malleable and ductile (that can bestretched, drawn or hammered lithesome without breaking ((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 squeezeoccurs in a bountiful state in only a few localities, notably Greenland (Encarta,1996). One of the physical properties of put right as an ore is its color which canbe black, brown or even reddish. Hematite is the most important branding 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 nuclearweight 55.847, its atomic number 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 becomes corroded, forming a reddish - brown, flaky, hydrated ferric oxide,commonly known as rust. (Encarta, 1996)     Iron is formed in shallow seas. It comes out of the water and collectson the sea floor. This creates an submersed deposit. This process 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 two ways irondeposits are located. In the first method special machines that detects theirons magnetism are used ti find a deposit. In the second 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 yearly 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 infernal region and shaft mining. 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