Atomic number: 26
Symbol: Fe
Average atomic mass: 55.845
Iron is a lustrous silvery soft metal. It is one of the most abundant metals in the dense core of Earth. It is almost never found in the free elemental state. Iron is the most used of all the metals, comprising 95% of all the metal tonnage produced worldwide. It is used in automobiles, hulls of ships and strutural components for building. The first use of iron was in prehistory. It was found in meteors. The smelting of iron began in Anatolia, and cast iron was first produced in Chins around 550 B.C.E. Iron is essential to our bodies. It functions primarily as a carrier of oxygen in the body.
Iron is ferromagnetic, meaning that it has the "normal" form of magnetism that most people are familiar with.
