The History of Iron and Steel

I'll be right back. I'm going to refresh myself with the video Material Properties 101 before I watch the rest of this. Luckily, your friendly neighborhood blogger already linked to that video, too.

The video is a great exploration of...

• the differences between wrought iron, steel, and cast iron
• the processes in purifying iron ore - especially highlighting other videos that show primitive ways of doing this in modern times
• blast furnaces, used to purify iron ore in modern times
• producing steel in various ways - including via a puddling furnace
• the Bessemer converter to produce steel

The video is, I think, too long to show in class unless your students have a better attention span - and tolerance for foreign accents - than mine do.

The video shows that it's 13:35 long, but it's really about ten minutes followed by a plea for a charity donation for the last three and a half minutes. The charity donation link is no longer accepting donations.

At 2:38 there's a hiccup in language. He says wrought iron is less than 0.8% carbon, but his graphic shows that it's less than 0.08% carbon. Wikipedia agrees with his graphic. Decimal places are hard sometimes.