Also read: What Makes Something Flammable? Steel wool which is also often called wire wool, steel wire, wire sponge and iron wool is a material made out of lots of thin and sharp bits of steel. It was originally invented in the s and requires a particular low-carbon form of steel to be readily manufactured.
The grade signifies the thickness of the fibers used to manufacture the steel wool and does not reflect the quality of the finished product. Steel wool is most commonly used by craftspeople as it is an abrasive substance that is great for cleaning a smooth work surface and allowing it to shine.
Oddly, it is also used in pest control and can be employed to block up the small holes that mice and rodents get through. It also, thanks to its properties when burning, is popular for use in the art of light painting. Yes, steel wool is not a form of dust but, in common with dust, the fine fibers of steel wool have a much greater surface area when compared to the volume of steel than you find in solid steel.
Steel wool will also burn when it is wet, which is a handy property when trying to start a campfire in the pouring rain. Good luck with your photography. The first thing to understand is that steel wool is actually mostly iron Fe.
We used a 9-volt battery to light the steel wool because the terminals are close together. Touching the battery to steel wool sends a current through the thin wire, and it heats up a lot to about degrees C. These temperatures cause the iron to react with the oxygen O2 in the air and creates iron oxide FeO2.
This reaction releases heat, heating up the next bit of iron and so on, causing a cascading reaction through the steel wool. Fluffing up the steel wool and spinning it increases the amount of oxygen available, speeding up the reaction and giving us the amazing display that we used for these photographs. Cool, huh? Now to warn you about the hazards. Be very careful with this. You are dealing very hot things and spreading them over a considerable distance.
Plus, some people consider this littering as you always send out little chunks of steel. The science of this is pretty cool. After the reaction, the final product is actually heavier than the original steel wool. Who would have thought that burning something would make it weigh more? Again, remember to be very careful with this.
Rob is an ecologist from the University of Hawaii. He is the co-creator and director of Untamed Science. His goal is to create videos and content that are entertaining, accurate, and educational. When he's not making science content, he races whitewater kayaks and works on Stone Age Man.
How to: Burning Steel Wool Here is a great how-to science experiment that you can try at home: burning fine steel wool with only a battery. Choose one of the following categories to see related pages: Film , Inspirational , Physics , Science. Share this Page. You can follow Rob Nelson Facebook. So interesting. Nice job. With gentle blowing enough heat will be produced to allow the burning to spread through most of the wool in the bowl.
You may even see small blobs of metal forming, where the steel has become molten. Once the fire is out, the steel and bowl will slowly cool down. All the steel you see around you has been extracted by humans from iron ore. It combines with water and oxygen to form various iron oxides — in other words, rust. It prefers to exist in combination with the oxygen, as an iron oxide. There are various ways this can happen.
One set of chemical reactions — rusting — involves water and oxygen, and can happen at room temperatures. But even if there is no water around, iron can react directly with oxygen, which generates heat. This reaction happens much more easily at high temperatures. If the heat from the reaction then builds up, it can be enough to set neighbouring areas of the steel burning too. In a lump of steel, most of the iron is inside the lump.
That means more iron is available to combine with the oxygen in the air, so a lot of heat builds up in a small area. In fact, the steel stops burning when iron oxide builds up enough to stop oxygen getting to any more of the steel. This effect of surface area effect is actually a very general principle. The extreme case is a very fine powder.
So much of the material is in contact with the air that reactions can happen very quickly. Ask Question. Asked 7 years, 2 months ago.
Active 2 years, 3 months ago. Viewed 9k times. Improve this question. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Think about heating a large bar of steel versus a tiny wire. While steel doesn't have spectacular thermal conductivity, it's enough that it takes a much hotter flame to heat a bar to the point of burning. A small wire doesn't have much material to transfer the heat to.
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