Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Iron

Starting point is 00:00:00 Located in the 26th place on the periodic table is the element iron. Iron is one of the most important elements in the universe. It has a vital role in almost everything, from the formation of stars to the creation of chlorophyll and plants, to the earth's magnetic field, and even your own health. Iron's been responsible for the rise of civilization, and there's a good chance there is an object next to you right now that has iron in it. Learn more about iron, one of the most important elements in the universe,

Starting point is 00:00:27 on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about entertainment, it's about,

Starting point is 00:01:12 rest, and millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. Everyone listening to this is familiar with Iron, even if you don't know it. Iron is incredibly important in ways that many of you probably don't even realize. And I'm not just talking about the use of iron and things like Steel, but the importance of iron has in the very formation of the universe and in the establishment of life on earth. With that, iron is the 26 element on the periodic table, having 26 protons in its nucleus,

Starting point is 00:01:58 which is what defines it. There are four stable isotopes of iron, iron 54, iron 56, 57, and 58. As we'll see in a bit, they are not just stable, they are extremely stable. By far, the most common isotope is iron 56, which makes up almost 92% of all iron. Iron is very reactive and oxidizes easily. Unlike other elements that bind with oxygen and form a single oxide, iron has multiple oxides with different numbers of iron and oxygen atoms in each one. The most common version is magnetite, which is a common black magnetic substance. If you ever visit a beach and see black specks on the sand, that usually is magnetite, and you can pick it up with a magnet. Iron oxidation is more commonly known as just rust. Unlike other elements such as aluminum or copper, where an

Starting point is 00:02:46 oxide will form a protective layer on the metal, that is not the case with iron. Iron will continue to oxidize until everything literally turns to rust. The chemical symbol for iron is FE, and it comes from the Latin word, pharum. In previous episodes, I talked about the formation of stars. The enormous gravity of stars fuses hydrogen atoms together to form helium. Helium is then fused together to form heavier and heavier elements. This continues, but only to a point, and that point is iron. When you split the nucleus of heavy elements such as uranium, it releases energy. When you fuse together light elements, you also get energy. As you move down the heavy elements, you get less energy from splitting atoms, and when you move up from hydrogen, you get less

Starting point is 00:03:31 energy from fusing atoms. There's a point in the middle where you can't get energy in or out anymore, and that's iron, and that's why stars stop at iron. For this reason, despite being the 26th element, iron is actually the sixth most abundant element in the universe. Iron is considered to be the stablest of any element. And yeah, before I get any emails, nickel 62 technically does have a higher binding energy, but because it is a higher mass, iron 56 is usually considered to be more stable. Iron is the primary component of meteorids. In the ancient world, the few iron meteorites that were discovered were considered to be extremely valuable because of their iron purity. There was a dagger made from an iron meteorite that was found in the tomb of Kangtun Common in Egypt.

Starting point is 00:04:18 Located in the corner of the Kaaba in Mecca, the holy sight in Islam, is the black stone. The black stone is believed to be a meteorite that fell to earth to show Adam and Eve where to build an altar. Imams and other Islamic scholars stressed that the stone itself, has no divine significance, it's only a historic artifact. As you are probably aware, iron is magnetic. The abundance of iron in the earth, plus the magnetic properties of iron, create the Earth's magnetic field. The magnetic field is the first of many things, which allow life on Earth to exist. The magnetic field protects the planet from the sun's solar wind, preventing radiation from hitting the planet and potentially causing the seas to dissipate. The molten outer core of the Earth,

Starting point is 00:05:00 which is responsible for the magnetic field, consists of approximately 85% iron, and the solid inner core is believed to be almost 95% iron. The magnetic field isn't the only thing that allows life on Earth to exist. Iron is an important part of chlorophyll synthesis. Without iron, plants wouldn't be able to grow and reproduce. This can be seen in the places where phytoplankton grows in the ocean. The highest density of phytoplankton is usually off of continental coast areas where iron is continuously being sent into the oceans by rivers.

Starting point is 00:05:32 In the deep, deep ocean, there is very little phytoplankton growth, mostly because there is little dissolved iron in the water. This has led many people to suggest fertilizing the open ocean with iron to feed phytoplankton. This would cause massive blooms in phytoplankton, which would take CO2 out of the atmosphere and water, and eventually put it on the bottom of the ocean. Likewise, animals need iron as well for the transportation of oxygen. Iron is the essential element in hemoglobin.

Starting point is 00:06:00 Hemoglobin is a protein in red blood cells that binds to oxygen in the lungs and carries it to tissues throughout the body, ensuring the delivery of oxygen necessary for cellular respiration and energy production. The average adult human only has about four grams of iron in their body, but those four grams are vital. The recommended dietary allowance of iron ranges from 8 to 18 milligrams per person per day. Iron has also had a huge role to play in the development of the modern world. In fact, it isn't a stretch to say that the modern world wouldn't exist if it weren't for iron. Iron is one of the seven metals of antiquity, the metals that were known to the earliest humans. These also include copper, tin, gold, silver, mercury, and lead.

Starting point is 00:06:43 While iron was known, it was the last of the seven to be exploited because it has the highest melting point. If you remember back to my episode on the Three Ages System of History, there was an entire higher age of human history known as the Iron Age. The Iron Age followed the Bronze Age, and if you used bronze tools, you could understand why people shifted to iron. There are some YouTube videos out there that show what happens when a bronze sword clashes with an iron sword. The bronze sword quickly will become deformed with large knicks in the blade, whereas the iron sword will remain almost entirely intact. In addition to being stronger and able to keep a sharper edge. Iron was simply more abundant. Bronze required the importation of tin from faraway places.

Starting point is 00:07:27 If someone disrupted your trade routes, they disrupted your ability to make bronze. Iron required special forges operating at higher temperatures to work the metal. This technology in the Mediterranean was believed to have been first discovered by the Hittites and then slowly spread. Some of the first people to regularly work iron were in India. There's evidence of early iron working as far back as 1800 BC in the Ganges. Valley. It appears that ironworking was independently developed several times around the world. In addition to the civilizations I just mentioned, it may have been independently developed in China, West Africa, and Egypt. One of the best examples of ironworking from the ancient world is actually

Starting point is 00:08:05 still standing. Known as the Iron Pillar of Delhi, it is a solid column that is 7.21 meters or 23 feet 8 inches high with a 41 centimeter or 16 inch diameter. The Emperor Shandra Gupta the second had it built in the early 5th century. To our modern sensibilities, it doesn't look like much. It's just a big iron pole. However, at the time, it was a massive demonstration of the skill of the ironworkers and the technical ability of the Gupta Empire. Also, in almost 1,600 years, it hasn't rusted. Today, you can see it at the Kuduminar complex in Delhi, a UNESCO World Heritage site and a place I highly recommend visiting if you happen to be in Delhi. Hand-in-hand with the development of ironworking was the creation of steel. Steel is just an alloy of iron and carbon.

Starting point is 00:08:53 Carbon would often be accidentally added to iron during the iron working process, which led to the discovery of steel. High carbon content iron has a lower melting point than regular iron. This allowed for it to be melted in small crucibles, whereas regular iron couldn't be melted as ancient people couldn't create temperatures that high. Crucible steel, initially developed in India, became highly prized in the creation of weapons. These Crucible Steel are known as Woot's Steel and Damascus Steel. Save for things like crucible steel, almost all ancient iron working was wrought iron. Rought iron is when the iron is heated and softened and then hammered into shape. One of the things that allowed the Industrial Revolution

Starting point is 00:09:33 to take place was the creation of blast furnaces that could completely melt iron. Blast furnaces were actually first developed in China in the 5th century BC, but they were on a relatively small scale. In the 14th century, blast furnaces were introduced to years. up where they used charcoal as their fuel source. Refinements in blast furnaces, and the move to coke as a fuel source, a derivative of coal, allowed large-scale furnaces to melt large amounts of iron that could be poured into molds. This became known as cast iron. Cast iron allowed for the creation of more complex shapes than could be created with wrought iron. This included parts for machines and locomotives. By the 19th century, steel had replaced iron for most

Starting point is 00:10:12 industrial uses, given its improved strength and resistance to fracturing. Improvements in the technology such as the Bessemer process and open hearth furnaces made the production of steel more affordable at a higher quality. One of the biggest developments in steel production was the discovery of stainless steel. Stainless steel wasn't developed all at once. It began in 1798 in France when the element chromium was added to steel, and it was observed that these chromium steels were resistant to corrosion. Chromium steels were used in the 19th century for very niche applications, and even into the early 20th century, it was still a very niche market.

Starting point is 00:10:49 It was hard to make, and it was really expensive. It wasn't until the 1960s that the technology existed to produce stainless steel at quantity and at a lower price. Today, stainless steel is commonly used in hospitals, kitchens, and bathroom fixtures. While steel is by far the biggest use of iron today, there are still uses for old-fashioned cast iron. The one that most people are probably familiar with is cast iron cookware. I've recently become a convert to use. using cast iron cookware. Its ability to distribute heat makes it much better than lighter metals

Starting point is 00:11:20 such as aluminum or stainless steel. Moreover, the more you use it, it gets better and better, and it can last for decades. Despite the use of other metals such as aluminum and titanium, iron is still overwhelmingly the most popular metal used by humans today. Over 90% of all the metal used globally is still iron, mainly in the form of steel. So, I think you can see just how important the element iron is. Iron plays a role in almost everything. It's in the stars, it's in meteors, it's in the earth, it's in our bodies, and it's in the tools and machines that we use. I think you can say without any exaggeration that we have never really left the Iron Age. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers

Starting point is 00:12:10 are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Iron

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