Steel
Alloys · Common · Timeless
The defining material of the modern world. Steel is iron with a carefully controlled carbon content, typically 0.2% to 2.1%, which dramatically increases strength and hardness over pure iron. Every major structure in the modern world depends on it.
Identity
- Source
- Historical alloy: iron and carbon
- Made from
- Iron
- Aliases
- Carbon steel, Iron-carbon alloy
Physical Properties
- Appearance
- Bright silver-grey, maintains a metallic sheen, rusts to orange-brown without protection
- Luster
- Metallic
- Density
- 7.85 g/cm³
- Melting point
- 1370 °C
- Boiling point
- 2750 °C
- Lighter
- Wootz Steel
- Denser
- Iron
- Magnetism
- Ferromagnetic
- Electrical conductivity
- Medium
Mechanical Properties
- Mohs hardness
- 5.5
- Tensile strength
- 1000 MPa
- Softer
- Orium
- Harder
- Celestial Siderite
- Workability
- Moderate
- Brittleness
- Moderate
- Malleability
- Moderate
- Ductility
- Moderate
Chemical Properties
- Corrosion resistance
- low
- Reactivity
- moderate
Lore & Narrative
The Bessemer process of 1856 transformed steel from a luxury material, expensive and slow to produce, into a mass commodity. Within decades, steel production increased a thousandfold, enabling railroads, skyscrapers, and industrial machinery that remade civilization.
- Notable uses
- Construction, transportation, weapons, machinery, appliances
- Forge uses
- construction, weapons, tools, machinery
- Worldbuilding traits
- ubiquitous, modern, structural, industrial
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