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. :(
this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
22 points (95.8% liked)
No Stupid Questions
40325 readers
1028 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
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.