I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around classifying metals. So far, I’ve seen two divisions:
1. Pure metals and Alloys
2. Ferrous and Non-ferrous
But I haven’t exactly seen a source that takes both classification divisions into account. Sources keep saying ferrous metals contain iron, so is iron the only pure metal that’s ferrous? Is iron even a ferrous metal? What about the other magnetic metals like nickel and cobalt?
In: Chemistry
>Is iron the ONLY ferrous pure metal, while every other ferrous metal is an alloy?
Yes.
Iron’s short form “Fe” is from its Latin name “ferrum”. “Ferrous metal” is pretty literally “metal containing iron”.
>Is iron the only pure metal that is ferrous?
Yes. Trivially. See above.
>Is iron even a ferrous metal?
Yes. Trivially. See above.
>What about other metals like nickel and cobalt?
If they’re pure, then no. If they’re an alloy containing iron, then yes.
If they don’t explicitly contain iron but instead just trace amounts, then we probably wouldn’t consider them ferrous metals. Where precisely that line gets drawn gets a little hazy.
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