Ferrocerium is the "flint" in lighters, and its ability to give a large number of sparks when scraped against a rough surface (pyrophoricity) is used in many other applications, such as clockwork toys and strikers for welding torches. Also known as Auermetall after its inventor Baron Carl Auer von Welsbach, it is sold under such trade names as Blastmatch, Fire Steel, and Metal-Match. A metal naphtha lighter A lighter is a device used to create fire with the intent to ignite another substance such as a cigarette, smoking pipe, or charcoal in a grill. ... Spontaneous combustion can mean the self-ignition, or apparent self-ignition, and burning of any mass; often of highly flammable materials, such as a pile of oily rags; see combustion. ... In mechanical engineering, a clockwork is either a lightweight mechanical linkage, especially one involving multiple axles, or a complete mechanical device whose functioning relies on internal clockwork (in the preceding sense), especially where muscular effort is the sole source of operating power. ... Green Razor Scooter This article is about things that people play with. ... Welding is a fabrication process that joins materials, usually metals or thermoplastics, by causing coalescence. ... Carl Auer von Welsbach ( 9 September 1858 - 8 April 1929) was an Austrian scientist and inventor who had a talent for not only discovering advances, but turning them into commercially successful products. ... A trade name, also known as a trading name or a business name, is the legal name of a business, or the name which a business trades under for commercial purposes. ...

While ferrocerium-and-steel function in a similar way to flint-and-steel in fire starting, ferrocerium actually takes on the role that steel played in traditional methods. When small shavings of it are removed quickly enough, the heat generated by friction is enough to ignite those shavings. The sparks generated are in fact tiny pieces of burning metal. Pebble beach made up of flint nodules eroded out of the nearby chalk cliffs, Cape Arkona, Rügen Flint (or flintstone) is a hard, sedimentary cryptocrystalline silica rock with a glassy appearance. ... Steel framework Steel is a metal alloy whose major component is iron, with carbon being the primary alloying material. ...

Lighter "flint" is composed mostly of rare earth metals, usually cerium or mischmetal, whose low ignition temperatures (150 to 180 degrees celsius) are the chemical origin of its easy sparking. Since smaller scrapings become better sparks, the mechanical properties of rare earth metals must be adjusted to give a usable material; to that end, at least two strategies have been developed to make such alloys more brittle: A rare earth is an oxide of a rare earth element. ... General Name, Symbol, Number Cerium, Ce, 58 Chemical series Lanthanides Group, Period, Block _ , 6, d Density, Hardness 6689 kg/m3, 2. ... Mischmetal (from German: Mischmetall - mixed metals) is a pyrophoric alloy of rare earth elements in various naturally occurring proportions. ... The degree Celsius (°C) is a unit of temperature named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (1701–1744), who first proposed a similar system in 1742. ... For other uses of Brittle, see Brittle (disambiguation). ...

1. Oxide - most contemporary flints are hardened with 20% iron oxide and 2% magnesium oxide.
2. Intermetallic - in the Baron von Welsbach's original alloy, 30% iron (ferrium) was added to purified cerium, hence the name "ferro-cerium". Iron reacts with rare earth metals to form hard intermetallic compounds similar to those in neodymium magnets; such magnets are also known to generate sparks quite easily when broken.

Iron oxide pigment There are a number of iron oxides: Iron oxides Iron(II) oxide or ferrous oxide (FeO) The black-coloured powder in particular can cause explosions as it readily ignites. ... Magnesium oxide is a white solid mineral that occurs naturally as periclase and is a source of magnesium. ... An alloy is a combination, either in solution or compound, of two or more elements, at least one of which is a metal, and where the resultant material has metallic properties. ... General Name, Symbol, Number iron, Fe, 26 Chemical series transition metal Group, Period, Block 8 (VIIIB), 4, d Density, Hardness 7874 kg/m3, 4. ... General Name, Symbol, Number Cerium, Ce, 58 Chemical series Lanthanides Group, Period, Block _ , 6, d Density, Hardness 6689 kg/m3, 2. ... Intermetallics is concerned with all aspects of ordered chemical compounds between two or more metals and notably with their applications. ... Neodymium magnet on a bracket from a hard drive A neodymium magnet (also, but less specifically, called a rare-earth magnet) is a powerful magnet made of a combination of neodymium, iron, and boron -- Nd2Fe14B. These magnets are very strong in comparison to their mass, but are also mechanically fragile...

Reference

• Disambiguation of "flint and steel" (http://www.trackertrail.com/survival/fire/flintandsteel/RBclarifications.html)