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How Hot Would a Light Saber Really Be?
Datagod asks: "Has anyone ever calculated the temperature you would need to be able to slice through steel like it was thin air? How hot would a light saber really need to be? Also, I am assuming that at least some of the metal would be vaporized and the expanding gas would fling bits of molten metal at the saber wielder. Wouldn't your average Jedi be horribly scarred from all this."
Steel is an element under FE. Steel the common name for the pure form of Iron. When Iron is mined it has a lot of carbon and other impurities in it. The process of putting iron through a blast furnace or folded, if your into swords, gets the impurities out of the metal and makes "steel". The refining process can be adjusted to remove varying amounts of carbon or arrange the carbon into a lattice. That is why carbon steel is less flexable. The Samurai sword is high carbon at the blade (hard holds and edge) and very low carbon along the back side (flexable hard to break, like those combs). Anyway that is why when steel rusts it turns into Iron Oxide. The other commentor is right about galvanized steel though that is an Iron Zinc Alloy.