Do metals generally have larger values of Young's modulus than alloys? If yes, then is steel an exception? In my physics textbook, they have written that metals in general have a higher Young's modulus when compared to alloys.
On the contrary, in the same chapter they have mentioned that steel has a higher Young's modulus than copper, aluminium etc.
Is there any generality that can be made here?


Ref: NCERT Physics Textbook Part 1, Class XI; Chapter- Mechanical Properties of Solids.
 A: Unfortunately, you have a bad textbook. Try to find others to supplement it. Here are some problems.

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*Most importantly to your question, alloys generally refers to metals. Thus, "Metals have larger values of Young's modulus than alloys" is near meaningless. Perhaps the authors mean "pure metals," but this too is incorrect. Many alloys are stiffer than many pure metals.


*"More elastic" is ambiguous, and the insistence that the meaning is always "stiffer" does not reflect any consensus in the field.


*Nobody refers to aortic tissue as an elastomer, as a look at the literature reveals. Elastomer generally refers to a synthetic substance; tissue is a biological substance.


*Stress can certainly be assigned an orientation, as in the components of the rank-two stress tensor. Perhaps the authors mean "pressure," but this doesn't match the context of axial stress that's being discussed.


*The language is generally poor, with missing articles and other grammatical and formatting problems; this suggests that the content hasn't received careful review.
Again, I wouldn't consider this resource to be a reliable one.
