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

Hi Charlotte. One reason this page is so darned long is because we've answered that question of why bronze can't rust again and again :-) ...

Although you might not know how long it will take for a piece of old chicken to become rotting chicken, you do know how long it will take for an old tomato to become rotting chicken: never ever, because tomatoes aren't chicken.

Rust is rotted iron. How long will it take for bronze (which is a different metal than iron) to become rust (rotted iron): never ever. Bronze and other metals can rot, corrode, tarnish, whatever -- but they can never rust because rust is defined as oxides of iron, the corrosion product of iron, rotting iron.

Bronze lasts a long time because when it begins to corrode, the oxides of bronze tend to be adherent and solid, so you get a thin coating of corroded bronze on the rest of the bronze that keeps air and water from getting to the underlying bronze and continuing the corrosion. That is, the corrosion products tend to seal away the bronze from the environment.

The corrosion products of iron, though, are non-adherent, loose, fluffy, and hydroscopic (suck up water, keeping the iron wet) so the iron stays in contact with the air and water and just keeps corroding. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi Angel. Thank you for reminding an old man of a favorite song from way back when ... .

Gold and platinum don't corrode -- they'll last almost forever. How long other metals last depends on their environment.

I don't understand what you are trying to ask with your percentages and dimensions. What is the question?

Regards,

Hi Jacob. No, I don't see such a pattern. Here for example are the elements with 26 through 30 protons .

Regards,

A. Hi Noah. When we are trying to express something in a foreign language which we are not yet fluent in, we usually have to think it all through in English, and then try translating it a word at a time. Tables and graphs are languages used to convey information, that you're not yet fluent in, so you'll probably need to express your results in words first.

"The steel rusted fastest" isn't enough info/data to bother trying to put into a table or graph. Tell us in words what data you have accumulated and we can help you build a table or graph that captures it. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi Sofia. Unless you find it uninteresting, I'd go back to the original and please the teacher. Stresses not only cause stress corrosion cracking, they also cause galvanic "hot spots" -- areas that will rust or corrode in water or acid faster than the rest of the metal ... As an aside, if you connect zinc and steel and put them in saltwater or a mild acid like vinegar ⇦in bulk on eBay or Amazon [affil links] or lemon juice, the zinc will corrode to prevent the steel from corroding. If you put some connected steel and copper into the saltwater or vinegar, the steel will corrode to protect the copper. Now back to your project ...

If you highly stress a metal, the area in tension will sacrificially corrode to protect the rest of the metal. You might try putting one piece of stressed metal into a jar of salt water, another into a jar of vinegar, another into a jar of lemon juice. Then take a piece of unstressed metal and put it in saltwater, another in vinegar, another is lemon juice and see if whacking the heck out of it did indeed make galvanic hot spots that led to quicker corrosion. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Hi Debra. I don't think they have any really special names. "Tarnish" or "corrosion" is just about it. The reason that iron/steel corrosion has the special name "rust" is probably just that there is much more iron and steel in the world than copper and silver, and corrosion of iron and steel is a much bigger problem for at least two big reasons:
1. Corrosion of steel is usually faster and more severe that the corrosion of other metals largely because the corrosion product is dusty and flaky and hydroscopic (water absorbing) and doesn't slow the corrosion (the presences of rust leads to more rust), whereas the corrosion products of copper and silver may be tenacious and slow down the ongoing corrosion.
2. Steel is often used for structural purposes. A bridge or building or ship can collapse if there is too much rust.

Regards,

A. Debra,
Copper oxide corrosion on copper and copper alloys is sometimes known as "patina".

I don't believe that silver tarnish goes by any other names, but instead I'll give you a bit of trivia. Contrary to most other forms of corrosion, silver tarnish is NOT silver oxide! It is in fact silver sulfide. (One of my professors back in grad school said his family's silver never tarnished until a factory was built in town.)

Bonus trivia! Rather than removing silver tarnish abrasively with polish, it is easier to remove it electrochemically using a hot water bath with some electrolyte (usually baking soda) mixed in, and some aluminum!

A. Hi Ruth. Per www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/RetailFoodProtection/FoodCode/ucm188064.htm

Regards,

A. Actually, you don't have to make the stoppers out of brass. Suggest you make them out of stainless steel, and apply a PVD coating that looks just like brass. Of course, it won't scratch as easily as brass (or stainless steel), and won't tarnish... One other issue to consider is lead. Most brass alloys contain lead -- it makes them more machinable. In the faucet business the lead content is severely limited in waterways (pipes, spouts, shower heads, and the like).

A. Hi kalyan. "Carbon steel" means plain steel. "Alloy steel" means steel with other metals alloyed into it like nickel and chromium. If there is a substantial amount of these other metals, the corrosion resistance is improved significantly -- both because the alloy is less prone to corrosion and because the corrosion products that do form will tend to be more impervious and less dusty than regular rust. In such cases the alloy steel is often called stainless steel or corrosion resistant steel.

The term can also mean "low alloy steel, i.e., steel with only a small percentage of those other metals; if the percentage is quite small, the effect is probably small.

Regards,

Electrolysis

A. Hi Jack. Wikipedia lists a good number of examples.
But are you sure your teacher defines 'electrolysis' the same way Wikipedia does? If you answer a question without really understanding the question, it's a disservice to your own education and to your teacher. Are you positive that you can answer the question "What is Electrolysis?". If not, ask your teacher the question before you try to answer it. Good luck.

Regards,

A. Ted, I think you are getting caught up in semantics. If you define rusting as/is the definition which is Fe + O = FeO2 you are correct. But many metals oxidize! Why don't you explain that to anyone? It's obvious from these posts that peeps are confusing rusting and oxidation. Why don't you explain that when metals tarnish, such as copper, it forms a greenish patina of copper oxide that forms on the outside surface of the exposed metal to atmospheric oxygen and moisture. This patina actually helps to protect the remaining underlying metal from future corrosion.

Brian

If you read a number of relevant threads you will get an understanding of how many times Ted has done what you are asking for.

 Thanks Willie. New readers are likely to feel that too much has been left unsaid, while regular readers are probably bored to death by my repetitions :-)

But if that's about the worst problem I face, I've got a damn fine job! ... and I'm truly grateful to you and a few other guys for making it possible :-)

Regards,

A. Hi Abena. The page you are reading says that precious metals (gold, platinum, etc.) will never corrode, and that other metals like copper, brass, zinc, nickel, tin and aluminum will corrode but it's not called 'rust' because that word is reserved only for the corrosion product of iron.

So what do you think should be the next step in your research?

Regards,

A. Hi Rylee. I probably wouldn't make it through the first period as a teacher, so I certainly can't presume to lecture teachers. But after reading thousands of student comments on their science projects on these pages for 24 years now, I know for fact that most young students are so eager to make the results of their experiments match their research that they almost always talk themselves into giving far too much weight to results that agree while eagerly dismissing as errors any results that disagree -- which means that they are inadvertently getting intensive training in "junk science" :-(

I would much prefer if you were allowed instead to do as one of our greatest physicists & teachers, Richard Feymann, suggested: guess at the answer, then do the experiments without predisposition, and only then research why you got the results that you did.

But, when you research this you will find that the speed of chemical reactions (like rusting) increases as the temperature increases because higher temperatures mean faster moving molecules, so more interaction and more likelihood of fast reactions. But on the other hand, the dissolved oxygen (which is what causes the rust, oxygen reacting with iron) decreases with increasing temperature (it bubbles out at higher temperatures). So the two factors are 'fighting' each other and the right answer is not at all obvious -- which makes a great case for your experiment.

You could put one of your experiment dishes in the freezer, one in the refrigerator, and one out in the open. But maybe put plastic wrap over all of them to minimize extraneous factors. If you have an old aquarium heater or other reliable heat source, you could also try warmer than room temperature. Best of luck!

Regards,

A. Hi Anne. That's been the topic of this thread for 17 years and hundreds of postings :-)
Please read the first Q&A back on page 1 of this thread. If you are having trouble reading and understanding the page, please have a parent read it and summarize what it says. It wouldn't be fair to the other students to keep drowning the page under more and more copies of the same Q&A, because each time the question is asked and answered the page gets longer :-)

Regards,