zlacker

>>hrl+(OP)
This should be an economics piece, not an environmental piece. The author states that "one of iron’s unalterable properties is that it rusts" yet further on acknowledges the existence of stainless steel.

There's nothing wrong with reinforced concrete, but the incentives to produce long lasting buildings are not there. The cheapest bidder will generally win and their building will last the "design life" of the building, but often not much more. The simplest way to change this is to extend the design life, which would result in stainless steels or another more expensive material being used in this application.

>>brutus+J5
> The author states that "one of iron’s unalterable properties is that it rusts" yet further on acknowledges the existence of stainless

Even stainless steel rusts, just more slowly. Roughly 10-100x more slowly, judging by https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1124/ML112490377.pdf and https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/23/8705/pdf.

>>wahern+0c
That doesn't smell right. I've got 15 year old knives that have never once shown signs of rust. A pair of old scissors left in the rain rusted in under a day. That puts the factor to closer to >10000 than 10 or 100...

>>petera+wh
There are different grades of stainless steels. The common, "construction" grade stainless steels usually rust albeit very slowly. And while some of them are basically impervious to corrosion, they are usually way more expensive or have a lot less tensile strength. I don't know about knives specifically but it wouldn't surprise me if those more corrosion resistant grades are what's used to make them.

>>mardif+Wi
All correct. Stainless steel is 'created' by adding chrome and a few other materials depending on the desired properties. But despite that it will still rust.

I think a good analogy world be eating healthy, you'll probably live longer then soon-to-be who doesn't eat healthy but in the end both will die and seize to exist.

Material science is incredibly interesting field and I think it will play a huge role in the future. It already does.