General Knowledge - General Science - Discussion

When iron gets rusted, its weight increases.

Here's why:
Rusting is a chemical reaction in which iron (Fe) reacts with oxygen (O₂) and water (H₂O) from the environment to form iron oxide (Fe₂O₃·xH₂O), commonly known as rust.

Chemical reaction: 4Fe + 3O2 + 6H2O \rightarrow 4Fe(OH)3 \quad \text{(later becomes rust)}.

Reason for weight gain:

In the rusting process, iron combines with oxygen from the air.
The oxygen atoms add mass to the iron.
As a result, the total mass of the rusted iron (iron + oxygen) is greater than the original mass of pure iron.

Summary:
Rusting increases the weight of iron.
This increase is due to the addition of oxygen from air and sometimes water molecules.

Its right that rust is formed but since rust is not stable as a layer on the iron nail so slowly rust fall off the nail eventually lost in the weight.

There is an example that when same thing happen with aluminium the rust on (aluminium rust) act as protective layer because it is stable on aluminium so it does not fall and weight increases.

Lossing of weight should be here because after the reaction the iron metal having the pores.

We cannot calculate with the atomic formulae like Fe2+O3=Fe2O3 and the weight as like the reaction iron and oxygen get combimned and due to which the weight wiil increased.

The rust material weight is decreases compared to its original weight. When oxygen react to fe the iron having pores and weight decrease. M very confuse for this question please clear this one.

Rust is nothing but the oxide of iron. When Fe comes into contact with moisture or air it gets rusted ie. Oxygen added to it and its weight is increased by the same amount as Oxygen is added.

Rust is nothing but the oxide of iron. When Fe comes into contact with moisture or air it gets rusted ie. Oxygen added to it and its weight is encreased by same amount as Oxygen is added.

When a iron rusted, it added oxygen to form iron oxide, thus the weight of reacted oxygen is added in original weight of iron, that's why an small increase in the weight is observed.

But I heard that during rusting, rust eats up iron from inside that is why iron breaks after a period of time due to rust. Then how is it possible that its weight increases.

Rusting results in increase of weight. Example - Increase in weight of a ship due to rusting affects its buyouncy where it has a tendency to sink. Hence should be replaced.

Rusting is simply a phenomenon in which we can easily see that one more element is going to add i.e. oxygen then obviously its wt. is going to increase.