What Metals Rust the Fastest (Steel, Copper, Bronze)

A. Steel is a refined and very useful form of the element 'iron'. Copper and bronze do not contain any iron, and only iron can rust (because rust is defined as iron oxide, a compound of iron and oxygen); so the answer is that steel will rust the fastest and copper and bronze will never ever 'rust'.

You are young to be considering the rest of the question, Isaiah. Like Iron, Copper is an element, too. And by 'element' we mean the 92 fundamental, inseparable materials of which everything in the universe is made -- i.e., things that are not compounds or mixtures of other things but are purely and completely only one thing, as determined by how many protons are in the nucleus of their atoms. There are 92 natural (found in nature) elements, with Hydrogen being number 1 with one proton, Helium number 2 with 2 protons ... and Uranium being number 92 with 92 protons. Iron is element number 26 with 26 protons, and Copper is element 29 with 29 protons. Bronze is not an element, but an alloy (mixture) of copper and the element 'Tin', element number 50.

But, yes, copper and bronze do tarnish, they do corrode. But bare copper roofs last decades outdoors, and bronze statues last decades outdoors, so it is very difficult to say which of the two corrodes or tarnishes faster, but again neither rusts. Good luck.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
2003

A. Hello, Destiny. We will reword it for you to try to make it clearer. Copper is an element (you can look up 'element'). Bronze is an alloy (you can look up 'alloy') of the elements copper and tin. Iron is an element, and steel is a very useful, reasonably pure form of iron.

Rust is iron oxide, the corrosion product of iron. You can only make iron oxide from iron and oxygen; you can't make it out of copper or tin, so copper and bronze can never rust.

Copper and bronze can corrode or tarnish, however. In fact, all metals except precious metals like gold will eventually corrode back to a form very similar to the ores we find in nature. When metals corrode the surface turns to some kind of oxide or corrosion product rather than being metal anymore -- so it no longer performs the functions of metal.

Yes, it's likely to look poorly, to be weak, to bend or break more easily, to become perforated with holes. Usually you can clean the metal -- remove the corrosion products -- but there is less metal left and eventually what's left will no longer serve the original function. Cars are made predominantly of steel, but the electrical wiring is pure copper; and there may be some wear surfaces or small electrical springs made of bronze.

Good luck with your project.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
2007

A. Hi, Dario. To keep your project moving forward, please try your best to express your question in terms of what has already been said. I've already explained why bronze and copper cannot rust but iron and steel can. I'll be happy to explain again if you can tell me what it is that you don't quite understand.

As for whether copper or steel tarnishes fastest, get a piece of each, shine them up with fine wet sandpaper to remove existing rust or tarnish and get to bare bright metal, and start recording what you see, and you'll have a good science project. Best of luck!

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
January 7, 2008

A. Plain steel nails would be best, Owen. Masonry nails if you have any (these are flat nails that look like long thin triangles rather than being round). Use sandpaper to remove plating or paint from whatever nails you have. If you have some painted sheet metal from an old toy or whatever, you can sand the paint off of that -- but first test it with a magnet to make sure it is steel.

Pennies are copper on their surface, and electrical wire and copper piping are pure copper. The pull tabs on soda cans are aluminum, as is aluminum foil.

The main reason for librarians is to help people find what they need from a library. Ask for help there.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
February 9, 2008

A. Steel rusts faster.

Anferneee h [last name deleted for privacy by Editor]
- Carlina, South Carolina
February 15, 2008

A. Christian, the first principle is writing such a project is that words have meanings, you can't ignore those meanings and bull on :-)
We've already said at least 3 times on this page alone that only steel and iron can rust and explained why:-)

As for your hypothesis, are you sure you clearly know what a hypothesis is. It's a statement that you believe to be true and now want to scientifically test. If you take a quick look at a bowl of M&M's and it strikes you that there are a lot of orange ones, you might form the hypothesis that "M&M puts more orange candies in the bags than any other color". Then you might buy 5 bags and count each color to try to prove or disprove your hypothesis, and follow it up with research and an interview with their marketing department.

For your metal corrosion project, you should pick something that attracts your curiosity and interests you for some particular reason, because that's what makes for a good project. It's hard for someone else to guess what you would be enthusiastic about, but think about it. Maybe you collect bottle caps, or old coins; maybe you're interested in classic cars but frustrated by how corroded all the parts always are; maybe you race model boats whose innards get rusty; maybe you do slot cars racing and your car hangs up due to poor electricity conduction from wear or corrosion; maybe you've built a metal wind chime; maybe when you were in kindergarten you made memorabilia for your mom but now all the gold thumbtacks are rusted and the silver ones aren't.

Find something that interests you and form a hypothesis (i.e., just a reasonable guess that you'll try to prove), then ask your teacher, parents, or librarian for help with how you can demonstrate it. Good luck.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
September 26, 2008

A. Hi, De-wet. what exactly do you mean by rust? You should mean "iron oxide", which can only come from the element "iron". But there are various alloys that contain iron, like cast iron, low carbon steel, high carbon steel and stainless steels of many different grades.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
October 8, 2008

A. Hi,
My name is Amy and I am currently studying corrosion at school. Rust is a form of corrosion, that is specific to iron. Iron oxide is rust so no other metal can rust. Metals such as aluminium actually form a surface layer of aluminium oxide which protects the metal from further corrosion. There is a table known as a Standard Reduction Potentials table that lists elements in the most likely to reduce to the least likely to reduce (the least likely to reduce are the most likely to oxidise), so if you wanted to protect something made of iron from corroding (rusting) you need a 'scrap' piece of metal to be sacrificed. this metal needs to be more likely to oxidise because it is at the site of oxidation that corrosion occurs. An example of a metal that could be used is zinc or magnesium.

Amy S [last name deleted for privacy by Editor]
student - Perth, WA, Australia
October 16, 2008

A. I'm doing the same thing for my project and I have feeling that steel will rust faster so for your hypothesis you should put: "I think steel will rust faster because ...." -- hope I helped.

p.s.: I'm eleven in the sixth grade.

Jasmine M [last name deleted for privacy by Editor]
- Lancaster, California
December 20, 2008

I am 9 and I just completed this project for the science fair. Ted's answers were very specific and helped to explain the process and the reasoning for rusting. Thank you. For my project, I used 5 glass jars, salt and hot water. I tested 5 types of metal for a week. I put one metal in each jar of salt water and waited and recorded the results after a week. I was kind of surprised by what this experiment taught me and in the process of doing this , I learned a ton of information about metals and rusting. I even learned a thing or two about rust removal that my mom was happy to hear about. Try it for yourselves it was very interesting.

Jonathan S [last name deleted for privacy by Editor]
- Ecorse, Michigan
January 3, 2009

A. Yes, Ty, that sounds like a good topic for a science fair project. Keeping the water hot can be problematic though. Any idea how you are going to do that? Another student opted to do refrigerator temperature vs. room temperature because refrigerator temperature seemed easier to maintain than a heated temperature. But maybe your mother or father could help you put your experiment dish on top of the hot water heater? Or maybe you have an aquarium with warm water in it that you could float your experiment dish on?
Let us know how your experiment comes out. Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
January 15, 2009

A. Hi. Soap-free 00 steel wool [on eBay or Amazon] rusts very quickly because it is steel and it has a huge surface area, but when you say "make the rust go away", do you mean you want to remove rust with these chemicals, or you want to immerse your metal into them instead of into water?

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
January 18, 2009

A. Hi, Kyana. Rust is iron oxide, a reaction product that is generated by iron combining with oxygen.

Where does the iron come from? -- it comes from the piece that is rusting, the piece that is rusting is losing some of itself. The area turns brownish because rust is brownish. Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
April 8, 2009

A. Hey,
I hate to tell you this but only steel and iron rust. Everything else has to be called corrosion.

Madeleine Leung
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
June 3, 2009

A. I think the science project questions are a study on oxidation. Oxidation is a chemical reaction involving Oxygen.
Rust is the common name for ferric oxide, but is also (incorrectly) used to refer to other type of oxidation/corrosion. As Ted stated only ferrous metals (those which contain iron) can rust. But nearly everything oxidizes... striking a match causes rapid oxidation of the chemicals in the match head.
Experiments involving water and metals should also take into account that tap water is never pure water (H2O), distilled water (from the store) is closer. Other chemicals present in tap water can cause widely varying results in your experiments depending on where in the world you are and how the water is treated to kill bacteria and other micro-organisms.
Footnote: Pure water will not cause oxidation (by transfer of electrons-the chemical process) because PURE water will not conduct electricity. It takes very little contamination to change this.

Hope this helped.

"Common knowledge" is what we assume the everyone else knows.

Jim Bus
- Washington C.H., Ohio
September 24, 2009

A. Hi, Ellesia. Distilled water is water that has been distilled. What that means is that regular water was put into a pot and boiled away, but the steam that it turned into was captured and cooled and condensed back to water in a fresh clean pot. Any dirt or salt or other contaminants that were in the regular water remained in the original pot, and the distilled water is now pure water.

The bronze age preceded the iron age, so there was a time when all sorts of things were made from bronze: pots and pans, plates, drinking vessels, helmets, shields, swords, tools, cell phones, and coins.

Today we have many choices for materials, and there are only a few things where bronze is a likely choice because it is heavy and expensive: statuary and knick-knacks, certain kinds of bearings, door hardware like knobs and knockers, cleats on ships, etc.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
October 2009

A. Now, girls: this is a discussion group, not a service that does your homework for you :-)

It's already been said more than a dozen times on this one page alone that only iron and steel can rust. Is it really appropriate to post the question that you did, rather than reword it a bit? :-)

I would suggest either immersing your metals in bowls of common household chemicals like vinegar [in bulk on eBay or Amazon], water, bleach (be careful with bleach and never mix it with other stuff), and coke or spritzing the metals with those liquids on a regular and controlled basis.

Luck & Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
April 15, 2010

A. Hi, Missa. Cast iron, wrought iron, malleable iron, stainless steel, Invar, Kovar. . .

Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
April 26, 2010