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Iron and steel
are made from iron ore which is a metal found in some kinds of
rocks. 
The rock is dug from the earth and put
into a blast furnace. Charcoal, made from coal, and limestone
are put into the furnace with thye rock and air is blasted into
it. It gets very hot! The iron ore melts and the liquid iron runs
out and cools.
It is now called 'pig iron'.
Pig iron is used to make wrought iron for garden furniture,
some tools and horseshoes.
Steel is made from pig iron.
In a different kind of furnace that works very fast, (modern
ones run on electricity), the pig iron is melted and some
kinds of stuff that are part of the pig iron, called silica, phosphorous
(say foss-for-us) and sulphur (say sull-fer) are
removed. If silica, phosphorous and sulphur are left in they make
steel weak.
The liquid steel cools as bars or rods and is later rolled and flattened into sheets for building ships, machinery and cans or made into steel girders for building skyscrapers and bridges.
Go here for information about making steel cans and recycling them. You can download a poster here.
http://www.cansmart.org/Resources/steelcan_story.html
Go here for an animation of how
a Blast furnace works
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/launch_ani_blast_furnace.shtml
| There's more information about iron and steel making here and about the environmental impacts of the industry http://www.geo.msu.edu/geo333/steel_mill.html http://www.epa.gov/ispd/ironsteel/index.html http://hsc.csu.edu.au/geography/activity/global/global_steel/global_BHP.html http://www.ec.gc.ca/cleanair-airpur/Iron_and_Steel-WSB1BEEFD9-1_En.htm http://www.howstuffworks.com/iron.htm http://www.chemguide.co.uk/inorganic/extraction/iron.html |
Acknowledge this
source in your bibliography like this:
Iron and
steel (2007). [Online], Available: www.kidcyber.com.au
Back to Technology and Inventions
April 2007