Question

What is steel an example of?

Answer 1

Steel is a mixture of different elements. It majorly consists of iron. It also contains carbon and manganese and a small amount of phosphorus, Sulphur silicon, and oxygen. Steel is one of the world's most popular and useful materials which has many applications. Steel is completely recyclable and it requires little energy. In the solution, we will see the chemical composition of steel and will find out the type of material steel is.

Complete answer:
Steel is made of iron and generally contains a small percentage of carbon to increase its strength and resistance to fracture. Many other elements may be present or added. Corrosion and rust resistant stainless steel generally requires an additional $11$ chromium. Due to its high tensile strength and low cost, steel is used in construction, infrastructure, tools, ships, trains, automobiles, machinery, appliances, and weapons. Iron is the base metal of steel. Depending on the temperature, it can take two crystal shapes (allotropes): body-centered cubic and face-centered cubic.
We know that when a compound is made up of two or more elements (metals or non-metals), it is known as an alloy. Here, in the case of steel, it is made up of mainly iron and carbon and hence, we can say that steel is an example of an alloy.

Note:
There are many important properties of steel such as hardness, toughness, elongation, fatigue strength, corrosion prone, high tensile strength, yield strength, plasticity and malleability. Iron is metal and it is prone to corrosion and hence, to prevent steel from corrosion, chromium is added to it.