Originally Posted by
UniChris
Fallacy alert: all steels have pretty much the same stiffness, over a small range of variation. Thickness and geometry, not exotic alloys, are how you make a steel item stiffer.
What meaningfully varies is the yield strength - the point at which they don't spring back after you remove the applied force.
Believe what you want to, but if there weren't significant differences in the way alloys and carbon content affect characteristics, nobody would bother. Now, why don't you go make a bicycle frame out of the cheapest low-carbon steel you can buy and tell us how well that bike performs?