Does ferrous actually mean magnetic? I always thought it meant containing iron? How could Nickel and Cobalt be ferrous if they are elements and not alloys?
It’s basically short for “Ferromagnetism”. So your guess with that is right. You can check the Wikipedia article about that topic, it explains quite well. I currently don’t have much time to give an ELI5. :(
They’re not considered ferrous because they don’t contain iron, if they’re considered ferrous in some domain then I suppose it’s a jargon use of the term specific to that domain
Edit: it could also be a confusion with ferromagnetism. Ferrous means “that which contains iron” (from Latin ferrum meaning iron), ferromagnetic is that which is magnetic like iron (there are other kinds of magnetism)
Absolutely no expertise guy, but here is a possible explanation : ferrous is a word use in common speaking, where it is useful to distinguish things based on practical properties. Being magnetic is one of those practical properties, and iron being the most common magnetic metal, it was designed as ‘ferrous’. Adding metals that contain no iron to the list makes it scientifically/technically incoherent but that does not matter much from a common sense practical point of view.
In what context have you seen them referred to as ferrous? [source?]
Half of the websites when I google and sometimes the AI summary depending on how it’s googled. This became a debate with my wife last night. I said only iron is ferrous she said showed a bunch of references to Nickel and Cobalt as ferrous.
I also found this in Wikipedia, which seems the most likely reason for the terminology confusion:
In chemistry, the term is largely obsolete, but it often means iron, cobalt, and nickel, also called the iron triad;[1]. It may sometimes refer to other elements that resemble iron in some chemical aspects, such as the stable group 8 elements
AI summaries tend to hallucinate random sentences rather yellowstone give correct informatiin lll
Yea it seems like including Ni and Co as ‘ferrous’ materials is only done in certain industries/applications. From a pure chemistry point of view, only iron (Fe) is ferrous. [source: got bachelors in chem]. Also, as mentioned elsewhere, some people/industries [incorrectly] use the term ‘ferrous’ to mean magnetic, but the actual term is ‘ferromagnetic’. Lots of the old terminology (lots of latin) is still used even though we now know they are technically incorrect.
