Re: What is the best free software for creating & editing PDFs nowadays

another one I've recently come across is "iron" where I'd say "steel"

Den 30.08.2026 kl. 18.30 skrev Charles Hope:

I'd like to see some context. Iron is an element. Steel is an alloy.

To the people who produce the stuff the difference matters. When iron ore is first smelted into metal you get pig iron. (The metal ingots are called pigs.) That can be further processed to get different grades of steel.

It's all about the impurities. Pig iron has a lot of carbon in it. Steel has a different amount of carbon. They both contain other impurities. So they're basically the same thing: iron plus impurities.

Ordinary people who don't run steel mills have picked up the habit of distinguishing between iron and steel. But, really, they're much the same thing.

Den 31.08.2026 kl. 01.42 skrev Peter Moylan:

I question that. Wikipedia has an article about cast iron and another one about steel. Though both kinds have iron plus impurities, their properties are sufficiently different to earn different names - and more important, different uses.

Den 31.08.2026 kl. 01.42 skrev Peter Moylan:

>
>> To the people who produce the stuff the difference matters. When iron
>> ore is first smelted into metal you get pig iron. (The metal ingots are
>> called pigs.) That can be further processed to get different grades of >> steel.
>>
>> It's all about the impurities. Pig iron has a lot of carbon in it. Steel
>> has a different amount of carbon. They both contain other impurities. So
>> they're basically the same thing: iron plus impurities.
>>
>> Ordinary people who don't run steel mills have picked up the habit of
>> distinguishing between iron and steel. But, really, they're much the >> same thing.
>
> I question that. Wikipedia has an article about cast iron and another
> one about steel. Though both kinds have iron plus impurities, their
> properties are sufficiently different to earn different names - and more
> important, different uses.
>

Iron may 'suffer' from impurities, whilst steel contains carefully controlled 'impurities' which are selected to give it the preferred properties.

It’s quite a bit more confusing than that.

References to unqualified “iron” before the 19th century, and sometimes thereafter, almost invariably refer to wrought iron.

Wrought iron (which is no longer manufactured commercially, not since Thomas Walmley and Sons shut down the Aston Forge in Bolton in England in 01973) overlaps with mild steel in composition, but has a different macrostructure, with slag inclusions giving it a fibrous structure and reducing its susceptibility to corrosion.

In the specific case of *cast* iron, “iron” *also* "contains carefully controlled impurities which are selected to give it the preferred properties". In fact, the main impurity in both cases is carbon. Cast iron has quite a bit more of it (over 2%) than steel; low-carbon “mild” grades of steel can have as little carbon as wrought iron does. Roughly speaking, the usual ferrous grades are something like this:

- 0–0.1% carbon: wrought iron

- 0.05–0.3% carbon: mild steel

- 0.3–2.1% carbon: carbon steel

- 2.1–4.5% carbon: cast iron

- 3.5–4.7% carbon: pig iron (rarely seen outside foundries)

Also, if you have 10.5% or more of chromium, it’s “stainless steel”, even if it has no carbon.

Cast iron normally also contains silicon to improve its casting properties.

From the perspective of anyone who has studied this stuff, the above is a terrible oversimplification, since there are hundreds of grades of steels, with dramatically different properties, and different pieces of steel may even have the same composition but dramatically different properties due to heat treatment.

This is almost certainly off-topic for alt.usage.english at this point, but which of the still-active newsfroups would be best for it?

Kragen

On the subject of iron and steel ...

One of my undergraduate subjects was called "Engineering Materials". I went to the first few lectures, and discovered that the subject was being taught by one of the worst lecturers I had ever encountered. His lectures were useless. The textbook was pretty good, though, so I decided to learn the subject by private study.

Over the course of the year I became quite an expert on steel: the different kinds, crystal structure, properties, smelting processes, and so on.

When I got to the final exam, I discovered that the syllabus had been changed. Practically nothing I had studied was on the exam. I just barely scraped through that subject.

Den 01.09.2026 kl. 02.00 skrev Kragen Javier Sitaker:

In the Good Old Days (tm) when there was traffic in all the newsgroups, you could find one that was relevant. Today almost all of them are dead, and therefore subjects that strictly speaking are offtopic, are accepted in this group. The language groups are the last ones to die out for some reason.

If you read the stuff that we've been discussing through the last years, you'll find heaps that are offtopic.

Your message is number 15 in the set that is about iron.

I’ve found quite a few that seem active over the past few days of browsing, and they’re not all language groups. But alt.usage.english is in some sense the healthiest group I’ve found so far. Here are some groups roughly ranked by volume, with my casual impressions:

- alt.usage.english: 70 messages per day

- comp.os.linux.advocacy: 60 messages per day, but mostly politics flames and racism

- alt.buddha.short.fat.guy: 40 messages per day, but mostly politics flames and racism

- sci.math: 30 messages per day, but it's mostly cranks flaming each other

- rec.arts.sf.written: 20 messages per day

- sci.electronics.design: 20 messages per day

- soc.culture.jewish: 20 messages per day, but they’re all deranged spam from Christian fundamentalists

- comp.os.vms: 20 messages per day

- comp.lang.c: 10 messages per day

- alt.folklore.computers: 10 messages per day

- comp.lang.forth: 4 messages per day, including many excellent posters

- comp.lang.lisp: 4 messages per day, including many excellent posters

- sci.crypt: 2 messages per day

- comp.arch.fpga: 2 messages per day

- comp.lang.misc: 2 messages per day

- talk.bizarre: 0.5 messages per day

- rec.radio.amateur.moderated: 0.4 messages per day, mostly ARRL announcements

- alt.sys.pdp10: 0.4 messages per day

- comp.infosystems.gemini: 0.3 messages per day, surprising for a protocol created in 02019

- alt.lang.asm: 0.2 messages per day

- comp.compilers: 0.2 messages per day, but they’re by really top people

- comp.text.pdf: 0.2 messages per day

- rec.radio.amateur.boatanchors: 0.1 messages per day

- comp.ai: 0.05 messages per day

- alt.hackers: 0.02 messages per day

Kragen

Every engineering material is optimised... There is no way energy would be expended, transport of materials to be at the place where the manufacture happens, etc. - then you do not optimise the material you make and the products resulting. The incentive for the effort to give a result is way way way way too high.

As it seems to me (metallurgist, significantly an engineer, etc.) ...

Every engineering material is optimised... There is no way energy would be expended, transport of materials to be at the place where the manufacture happens, etc. - then you do not optimise the material you make and the products resulting. The incentive for the effort to give a result is way way way way too high.

As it seems to me (metallurgist, significantly an engineer, etc.) ...

---------------------------------------------

At the home hobbyist level it's useful to know the properties of common scrap metal, such as A36 hot rolled structural steel. Then you can judge on your feet if what you happen to find will serve for what you want to make.