How Stuff Works-Aluminium

once the most precious metal in the world it covers the top of the Washington Monument and the wings of high-performance aircraft it can bend like paper and support like steel it's aluminum and everything you need to know about it is right here now on how stuff works every year we make enough aluminum foil to cover the state of Maryland but why what is it about this silvery metal and that makes it the ultimate material for everything from baking potatoes to going to space along them is probably one of the most precious metals we have yeah you're good boiler it's everywhere and there's a reason for it it is such a versatile material it turns out that aluminium has some amazing qualities it combines all the characteristics required to be more versatile for design and aluminium provides all of the other aspects aluminium is the metal of the future in fact it's pretty much impossible to go a day on the planet without aluminium but even though we use it all the time this super metal still has its secrets aluminum surrounds us it's even in us a typical adult takes in 30 to 50 milligrams of aluminum everyday from our food and drinks not that its nutritional it's just impossible to avoid aluminum is the most common metal in the world in fact it makes up 8% of the planet's crust but that doesn't mean it's easy to find at least not in its pure state unlike gold and silver it doesn't exist as raw nuggets or rich veins no miner has ever panned for aluminum we don't find aluminum in his free form but it just doesn't look like aluminum that's because aluminum has a long-running atomic love affair with oxygen it just can't live without it and oxygen is the third most common element in the world that means that without some serious energy to stop it aluminum automatically bonds with oxygen to form aluminum oxide instead of staying in its pure form so when you go looking for aluminum you're pretty much looking for mud or at least clay in fact aluminum's first recorded use was by ancient middle-eastern Potter's who used clay laden with aluminum oxide to strengthen their pottery it's been around forever 5500 BC they talked about the the metal from clay but there was no process so that you could get the quantities that would make it feasible in other words it was just clay not metal but it wasn't until 1807 at that British chemist Humphry Davy first identified a metal base to the salt called alum while identifying it was the easy part isolating a metal proved to be the real challenge it took almost another 20 years before anyone actually did it but the process was so difficult and expensive that it kept aluminium more valuable than gold until the beginning of the 20th century selling foreign in today's dollars about $600 an ounce Napoleon the third entertained guests with he used an aluminium spoon and the guest you'd go but the aluminum spoon was considered more valuable today the process of isolating aluminum begins with a rich deposit of that same ancient clay bauxite Alco is Huntly mine sits just south of Perth amid Australia's darling mountain range and these mountains are pretty much built from bauxite they fanned on the meat to the other side of the ranges here this is the largest full-time one in the world here we mine 23 million tons of books out every year but most of it can't be removed without first busting through a barrier of underground rock that's more than 16 feet deep and how does that happen with enough explosives to demolish a 10-story building we'll have about one to two hectares as a blast every time and that will liberate in the order of between 50 and a hundred thousand ton that's 50,000 tons of ore not aluminum now the trick is to separate the aluminum and oxygen from everything else inside the box side which means pummeling the ore into powder the milling system produces fine particles that's easy to digest the powder door is digested at facilities like Alcoa span Jarra refinery that's where an amazing transformation takes place the bauxite powder is mixed with a caustic fluid that physically separates the aluminum oxide from the mud and sand leaving a solution of concentrated aluminum oxide and here's what's really astounding the solution dries into gritty crystals called alumina that looked more like table salt than the metal it will eventually become aluminum oxide is a white it resembles beach sand it's extremely bright it's extremely hard as a matter of fact if you go to construction supply store and buy sand paper you're buying aluminum oxide but you won't find this aluminum oxide down at the local hardware store it's feeding the global demand for aluminum that's why it's critical for it to get shipped as quickly as possible any delay in the supply chain drives up the cost of aluminum so a telco is Bunbury port conveyors transport the alumina using a massive ship loader the shipload is one of our most strategic pieces of equipment within the organization really it's if the ship loader does does not does not work we don't we don't load out any alumina which is which is our bread and butter the loader fills ships with up to 70,000 tons of alumina the freighters are divided into seven massive hulls why seven because the world's demand for aluminum is so great ships are filled to the brim and it's critical that the colossal weight of the alumina powder be distributed evenly across the entire length of the hull if we get it wrong the vessel could right we load in small increments if you like up and down the vessel until we solid at a good level counter we got another 550 tons to put on the starboard side and that hold will be finished a loaded ship leaves the port every three days and the Illumina it carries will be transformed by a smelter into 35,000 tons of pure aluminum the metal that makes our way of life possible drag racing the fastest sport on land that's taking them up and put them down a hundred and eighty eight point five two miles per hour I love the speed I love the thrill of the excitement in drag racing it's not just top speed that matters but acceleration and there are two ways to boost it you can add horsepower or you can cut weight light weight is crucial because it essentially equates to extra horsepower without this lunar technology this motor would have to weigh I'm gonna say in a neighborhood of 80 rpms but pure aluminum suffers from two crucial weaknesses it doesn't have the heat resistance that steel does it's hot inside the piston cylinders and aluminum is much softer than steel which makes it great for punching out beer cans but bad for standing up to high pressure explosions we're putting a lot of stuff and the cylinders on these things to make them ridic try to blow up and expand it's not just the pressure from inside the engine that's a problem as the dragster accelerates from zero to more than 200 miles per hour in less than six seconds the rust twists every piece of the car including the engine block as its twist and trying to twist this whole frame up here the block is kind of helping hold this whole car together - but if the block isn't strong enough the twisting force pinches the piston cylinders inward and causes real trouble this honk all the pistons don't start rubbing and selling walls and it's gone this should blow up so how do engine builders overcome aluminum's weaknesses by blending specialized aluminum alloys and here's what's so remarkable about the metal going into these engines it's 98% aluminum just by adding tiny amounts of copper silicon magnesium or titanium it's possible for companies like dart machinery in Troy Michigan to build lightweight aluminum alloy motors with heavy duty strength which all change the properties of the metal giving it hardness giving it tensile strength giving it good elongation and fatigue resistance the other tricks are in how you shape and treat the aluminum alloy the traditional method of making engines was to pour molten aluminum into a mold but this leads to structural weaknesses in the metal you don't know cast aluminum block was not a good quality piece to use to solve that machinists now mill each engine out of a single 700 pound billet of compressed aluminum alloy after it's poured molten into a shape is forged which is an impact process which condenses it into a cube and also condenses the grain structure and the molecular structure making it very dense very solid and very uniform but actually carving an entire engine block from a dense alloyed metal is no easy job which is why dart calls in a high-tech machine called a CNC CNC is computer numerical control and that refers to the fact that a computer program is driving all of the cutting tools in the machining center the CNC attacks the billet with a series of sharpened carbide steel drill bits the much harder steel blades easily shape the lighter and more pliable aluminum all according to a tricked out 3d design when we rough the Blackwell machine like the roughing tools will run 4000 rpm 240 inches a minute we can make a yard and a half of chips and two and a half hours they remove a lot of metal in a short amount of time by the end the 700-pound billet is whittled down to an engine block weighing just 140 pounds but before the engine is ready for the heat of competition it undergoes a final process each engine spends 12 hours in a 300-degree oven the process is called heat treating and it does something remarkable to this once solid cube of aluminum the heat treating process aligns the molecules the the green structure of the metal and it ultimately makes it a much stronger much more uniform and much more stable piece the entire process produces aluminum engines strong enough to pound out more than 2100 horsepower almost three times as much as a NASCAR racer everybody's going more than belen product it's more expensive but it's better a finished aluminum engine costs as much as a hundred and twenty thousand dollars but for veteran drag racer Ricky Smith and his daughter Melissa the aluminum engine forms the heart of the family race team and every day at the track in winston-salem North Carolina Smith Racing pushes the limits of both man and metal 80% of this thing is made out of alone without aluminum drag-racing would probably be set back 40 years in terms of Technology dragsters match the speed of a jet on takeoff whether at the track or on the tarmac aluminum gets these machines where they need to go light strong and formable aluminum is a high-tech material that has some very down-to-earth uses and one of them fits perfectly in the human hand the beer can that's a very efficient package it's a perfect container it turns out that beverage cans are under some serious pressure the average beer can exert outward pressure of 95 pounds per square inch about three times as much as a car tire and the only thing containing that pressure is a wall of metal at just four one thousand of an inch thick that's thinner than abusive paper if you try to squeeze it you can tell it's not just full of product but it's a little bit under pressure that's a natural aspect of the carbonation process and it keeps the integrity and the quality of the beer at its highest state so how does aluminum hold back the explosive power of beer by taking on the exact right shape at anheuser-busch's metal container corp in st. Louis Missouri the transformation into a container begins with sixteen thousand pound coils when the coil unrolls and a punch knocks out flat half ounce disks about the size of a coaster we've been able to lose just barely enough metal to make sure that we have a good high integrity pack each tiny disc is then stretched to become a full 12 ounce beer can incredibly aluminum can take this pounding without tearing or breaking because it's so ductile it doesn't even need to be heated to take on a new form it really allows the product to stay fresher than most packaging materials that's the beauty of the aluminum the stretching is done by a cylinder press that slams into the disk the force of the impact draws the metal out an incredible 400 times its original height and creates a 12 ounce container but it still doesn't have a top so pallets holding 8,000 169 cans are shipped out to breweries and soda companies where each is filled in cat it's 2,000 cans a minute per line so we're filling 10,000 cans a minute throughout the day 10,000 cans a minute means 100,000 six-packs of beer each and every hour of the day let's say you wanted to design the ultimate material lightweight malleable non corrosive strong it would look a lot like aluminum a whole lot but to get pure aluminum you've got to rip away the oxygen atoms that it holds so tightly and the way to do it is with electricity lots and lots of electricity which is why the most difficult part of producing aluminium isn't mining the bauxite or building facilities like this Alcoa is point Henry smelter in Geelong Australia it's generating electricity needed to make the whole operation run they call aluminum electricity in a solid form okay because it takes so much about 30% of our cost to make a pound of aluminium is just in electricity we use over 340 megawatts of electricity a year which means that each part of aluminium is constantly blasted with enough electricity to power a mid-sized city the power comes in to basically the top of each pot flows down the anode rod through the pot then flows out the bottom and then on to the next pot so it's a long series circuit but what is the electricity doing to the alumina inside the pot it turns out that the force of the electrons in the circulating electricity literally shatters the bonds between aluminium and oxygen it's in the presence of electricity that that that electrolytic process happens that we free up the aluminium atoms from the oxygen atoms the oxygen rises to the top of the pot while the denser molten aluminum sinks the 1740 to degree liquid aluminum is sucked out of the cry light with a vacuum the aluminum is removed from the pot by the tapping operation that happens once every 36 hours and we take out over two tons of metal every 36 hours finally work it started with a bang and the bauxite mine is complete to keep up with the man this operation runs 24/7 and pumps out more than 154 thousand tons of aluminum a year but what exactly makes pure aluminum so useful turns out its incredible abilities come from the unique way aluminum atoms group together if you can imagine a square box in the center of each of the six sides is an atom as opposed to being in the center of the whole cube the aluminum atom can be pulled and stretched from any direction it's cubic structure lets anything made from aluminum expand and contract in all directions without breaking it can be rolled hammered stamped beaten to death not that for the fifth lightest metal in the world lithium beryllium sodium and magnesium are lighter but none form atomic bonds that are both strong and flexible so aluminum is the only metal with a low atomic weight that's also durable enough to hold up under the most extreme conditions aluminum is lightweight and relative strength make it an ideal metal for all kinds of different applications but for one it is essential there can be steel beer cans they don't make steel planes a Boeing 777 is more than 200 feet wide 242 feet long and weighs 370 thousand pounds its engines generate more than 230 thousand pounds of thrust its top speed is 553 miles per hour that's more than twice as fast as the worst hurricane winds in history and only aluminum makes all this possible the aviation industry uses it to tremendous degree for everything all a V Asian materials are closely monitored they're inspected x-rayed licensed they're kosher eyes because of its unique atomic structure aluminum has an amazing strength to weight ratio a 777 built out of steel would weigh almost 1 million pounds to make it fly would require engines as powerful as 3 third-stage Saturn 5 Rockets generating more than half a million pounds of thrust but it's not just that aluminum is light and requires less power to fly it's also very flexible which is ideal for making airplane wings when you look out and you see the wing flexing just relax and know that it's meant to do that we've got to have the ability for those wings to give and take as the plane lifts off and way up but it turns out that the only thing keeping all of this flying metal together is an invisible microscopic layer of oxygen when pure aluminum comes in contact with air it immediately oxidizes forming a microscopically thin skin of aluminum oxide it's very important to protect it against the elements of nature and factory air but how do you make a sheet of aluminum that can stand up to the rigors of flight the answer is found here at Alcoa as Davenport works in Davenport Iowa for the 2,200 men and women work around the clock in this 130 acre facility that's really like having a small city under one roof the work begins in the plants furnace where the company creates a special alloy aluminum mixed with small amounts of copper zinc iron and magnesium the molecular bonds within the alloy stretched longer and thinner than plain aluminum while remaining flexible and strong alloys are selected based on their composition and their characteristics get all those different possibilities for that particular piece of aluminum but to create those powerful bonds require some serious heat the furnace roars at 1,400 degrees and occasionally coughs out molten metal just one drop on bare skin burns through flesh so workers don't take any chances it keeps the metal off of my neck and it trust me you need it because the metal and the heat here is so intense you can't go here without some kind of protection from the furnaces the aluminum alloy pours into giant water-cooled molds this aluminum may end up as thin sleek airplane skin but it starts out as an ingot more than twenty nine feet tall six feet wide and a foot and a half thick think about that the thin skin on a jet wing starts out as a giant aluminum brick as tall as a two-story building and just one in got weighs 35,000 pounds more than two fully fueled Lear Jets they're so heavy specially trained operators must lift them using 50 ton cranes you cannot think you just got a reactive side up down right left you just do you have to be the crane how do you turn these massive hunks of metal into winged skin it takes one of the beefiest machines on the planet a seven and a half ton beast called a hot rolling mill at 220 inches the mill here is the widest in the world but why is wider better it's because the wider the sheets the fewer it takes to cover a wing and fewer panels means fewer seams and that equals a stronger wing it's a real beast what that does is allow us to make very long very wide pieces for customers which gives them a more structurally sound piece to create those pieces the mill generates an incredible 16 million pounds of force that's as much force as a space shuttles engines generate unlit thought only instead of hurling the shuttle into space this press pushes out perfectly flattened sheets of aluminum it's like putting the dough in one end of a pasta machine and squeezing it out the other we might send out something that's three quarters of an inch and its eventual final shape can be down to as thin as a quarter of an inch but it's not just power the work must also be incredibly precise roller are less than one one thousandth of an inch and are capable of stretching over 65 thousand pounds of aluminum at once that's because the lives of more than 300 people are on the line every time a full triple 7 takes off the voids or defects in the metal that could you know cause the metal to fail at some point these sheets form both the upper and lower skin of the wing the aluminum alloy for the upper part has to endure the force of air moving across it at nearly 600 miles per hour upper wing skins of aircraft are typically 7000-series alloys and those are selected for their high strength the lower wing skin needs to be even stronger to repel debris kicked up by takeoffs and landings all those things that happen underneath the wing the underside of the wing gets pretty feed up to soft and the wing skin will damage easily too hard and it won't flex these raw aluminum sheets strike the right balance before they move on to the largest factory in the world where they're to be assembled into the cutting edge 777 aircraft ready to go take a look bulletproof glass since World War two laminated glass has offered the best protection available against enemy rounds but what do you do in bulletproof glass isn't bulletproof bulletproof glass that in many applications where the enemy is getting more creative it does not work the 50 caliber round is one of the most devastating tools of war 50 caliber means is 0.5 inches in diameter but the 50 caliber slug is almost 2 inches long it could actually hurt somebody probably just by throwing it at them when these are significant bullets fired from a sniper rifle or other special weapon these rounds achieve muzzle velocities of 2,800 feet per second even at a range of up to a mile the round can punch through light armor and even bulletproof glass like a rock through an old-school window we actually had an instance where we tested a three-inch all glass laminate and the bullet went straight through the laminate it penetrated five phone books and rattled around the test cage for a while before finally stopping so how do you protect against something so powerful the answer aluminum unbelievably the same aluminium oxides melted into metallic aluminum can be transformed into the ultimate bullet-stopping material it's a see-through aluminum panel called a LAN simply put it's a better armored material but how can white powdery aluminum crystals become clear bulletproof panels it's all thanks to aluminum's unique structure only in this case it's not the flexible metallic tube it's a specialized crystalline form you have a defined structure define geometry to find placement of atoms unlike in a metal this structure doesn't flex or bend instead it shatters on impact this might seem like a weakness but the crystalline structure of the ceramic molecules actually gives a LAN its bullet-stopping strength how because with each crack and fracture the panel drains of bullets deadly force it absorbs the energy from the bullet and it will break it up into smaller pieces so that it doesn't even penetrate the laminate Halon gets its name from its key ingredients aluminium oxygen and nitrogen and all three are combined into a dried powder here it's Sir Matt corporation in Burlington Massachusetts and here's what's so surprising a lawn panels are made like ceramic pottery with the powder pressed into molds and fired in a special kind of kiln it's very hot indeed and we are talking well over a thousand degrees approaching 2,000 degrees this is where a miraculous transformation occurs the aluminum oxygen and nitrogen atoms fuse together into a ceramic with 100% density when you're looking through something and needs to be clear you cannot have any micro porosity even on the level of atoms it also needs to be completely pure but you can't see through it yet so each panel is ground and polished until it's fully transparent you can see that milk like material is a polishing compound that goes between the polishing pads and it sits on here for many hours because the material is so hard and and it has to be ground down smooth finally the panel is ready to be tested against a deadly round on the battlefield the 50 caliber on the backside here you can see that there's a bowl but there's no hole and in that this did prevent the bullet from penetrating it not only did this aluminum panel stop the round but this material is lighter thinner and tougher than a similar sheet of bulletproof glass I know it'll be saving a lot of lives blood soldiers lives they they put their lives on the line for us and these materials will will help them out a lot every day Americans go through more than a million pounds of aluminum but for much of this mega material it won't be its first time around it's so recyclable about two-thirds of the aluminum that's ever been made is still in existence while it may take a lot of power to make aluminum once aluminum oxide is stripped of its oxygen atoms metallic aluminum is incredibly stable that means it could be melted down and reused again and again forever a woman was like a penis nothing goes to weight every time you cycle recycled cans wind up in a place like this anheuser-busch recycling Corp in Hayward California we're gonna open these doors cans are just gonna fall out dr. jokes over I'll get my guy Robin we'll just push these cans up pushing on the conveyor you got a hole they're sorting material every loose scrap of paper piece of steel or plastic anything that's not aluminum needs to be removed we're trying to do the best inspection we can so we ship these to the mills get the best loads out that we can after inspection the loose cans fall into the crusher we're a massive hydraulic press crunches them into bales that are perfectly square then they're shipped off to the smelter they're going to be melted down and made into new aluminum cans sheet and here's a staggering fact to ponder with friends over a beer in less than three months and aluminum cans circulates once through its lifecycle that can can be all the way through that closed-loop system and back in your refrigerator sixty to ninety days later filled with a new beverage all while using much less energy in Australia smelters alone consume 10% of the nation's total power so by recycling you cut the demand for electricity and that reduces greenhouse gas emissions recycling an aluminum can saves about ninety five percent of the energy required to make a can out of virgin materials 50 caliber rounds aren't the only danger in a war zone IEDs or improvised explosive devices have been the leading cause of American casualties in the Middle East more than 1,700 US personnel have been killed by ie D explosions since 2003 unlike the penetrating power of a high-speed projectile IEDs killing power comes from concussive force a massive rolling wave of energy that can shred a Humvee and anyone inside it its blast that is one of the big threats now not just projectiles amazingly aluminum may hold the answer to protecting against these deadly blasts the key bubbles just outside Toronto Canada sigh Matt technologies is engineering a low-density aerated aluminum known as aluminum foam we really want to get our material between harm and people creating a lumina mohm isn't easy it means transforming an 800-pound Falak of aluminum into four by eight panels with a total combined weight of just 40 pounds it takes place inside a special chamber it creates bubbles in the molten aluminum that little box you see over there that's where all the magics made we can adjust the airflow and the RPM and the temperatures and the speed of production to change it the properties of the foam we can make a light foam we can make a very heavy foam large cells or small cells the smaller the cells or bubbles the heavier the foam lighter foam can be installed in car doors the heavier stuff might one day form the inside walls of the US Embassy in Iraq and no matter the weight it's all designed to do the same job as the impact hits it each one of those bubbles the walls collapse and as they fracture they're each absorbing a little piece of the energy that's being impacted on the panel as each bubble in the foam collapses it takes away energy from the blast so instead of the concussive force from an explosion ripping into a building support columns or human tissue its absorbed by strategically placed foam force will actually compress the material and not transfer into the other structure and that's exactly what our material is great at doing it bulletproof glass and foam aren't the only ways aluminum fights terrorism it also powers bomb detecting lasers with x-ray vision more than 7 million cargo containers enter US ports every year with this flow of Commerce comes the risk of terrorists smuggling an atomic bomb into the country that's why scientists are rushing to create a laser based device capable of detecting nuclear materials before it's too late and this important work couldn't happen without aluminum it weren't for aluminum we would not be able to do type of research that we're doing right now we look into the endless possibilities really is amazing scientists have long known that as magma cools within the Earth's crust aluminium and oxygen atoms crystallize to form clear corundum the base mineral for sapphires this means the aluminum and oxygen atoms pack into a regularly ordered and repeated molecular pattern imperfections within the structure refract light in ways that give sapphires their brilliant colors is these gorgeous Ceylon sapphires that you find in the ground actually have impurities that cause that blue color or that yellow color so what does sapphires have to do with lasers well researchers discovered that by combining aluminum up with another metal titanium it's possible to synthesize perfectly clear sapphires and instead of refracting light these sapphires amplify light pulses into lasers strong enough to penetrate metal containers and scan what's inside laser stands for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation so while the light of the Sun or lamps beams outward has dispersed wavelengths lasers focus light into a beam with an incredibly short wavelength and the crystal structure of Ty aluminum sapphires not only focuses these beams it actually amplifies their power by increasing the frequency of the wave length you have amplifiers which crisscross back and forth through the crystal and each time the beam goes to the crystal it gets more energy and this is the basis for our laser but where do you get a 45-pound sapphire that's nearly twice as large as any found in nature to produce one of these massive synthetic gems crystal systems in Salem Massachusetts combines aluminum oxygen and titanium in a process designed to replicate forces inside the Earth's crust and it all starts with pieces of aluminum sapphire seed crystals called crackle it's really the building blocks if you will for the growth and the crystallinity of our sapphire at three thousand eight hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit more than twice the melting point of steel the crackle melts and blends with the titanium then remarkably as the mixture drops just below this incredibly high temperature it freezes the process itself is a very simple process were melting things and we're freezing them we slowly bring it down to a point where it solidifies then once it solidified we open it up and we take out a crystal this is titanium Crisco the sapphires are then cut and polished making them ready for use inside the world's leading research centres at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California ty aluminum sapphires amplify light energy to astounding levels this is higher than the electrical grid output of the entire world this incredible energy is only available as a focused laser beamed in short bursts and these bursts are powerful enough to penetrate all kinds of things including metal shipping containers where terrorists might plant dangerous weapons those beams can detect nuclear materials concealed nuclear materials in containers and could be useful for example for scanning cargo ships coming into ports to ensure that no nuclear material gets shipped into the u.s. because if there are nuclear materials present the radiation will interrupt the beam in a unique way and this interruption will send a warning signal back to authorities abundant enough to turn into beer cans strong enough to power dragsters flexible enough to skin airplanes and transformable into everything from glass to foam aluminum is the ultimate material for the modern world and this is just the beginning of the secrets held by this miraculous metal you

Channel: Tedla Bayou

Views: 2,311,639

Rating: 4.4790049 out of 5

Keywords: Aluminium, Chemical element, Friedrich Wöhler, Anteros, Piccadilly Circus, aircraft, railway, foil, Building and construction, non-carcinogen, how stuff works

Id: hLoAo3mkOhg

Length: 42min 35sec (2555 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 26 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/Bedhead643]

Now I just wrap my leftovers in it! :D

[u/barath_s]

Aluminium oxides can be still pretty expensive.And pretty

[u/barath_s]

That was between 1854 and 1886, when aluminium metal was scarcer than gold, and accordingly more valuable.

The 1855 french exposition (exhibition)which displayed 12 small ingots caused its popularity to skyrocket as jewelry, with French elite wearing broaches and buttons of aluminium, Napoleon III having aluminium cutlery (supposedyy) and the washington monument topped with Aluminium.

[u/Garuda1_Talisman]

This is relatively easy to explain.

Metallic aluminium is an extremely reactive metal. When not alloyed, it is extremely hard, and when alloyed, it forms extremely competitive alloys in applications where mass is an issue.

The thing is, its extreme reactivity means you cannot find it in nature. The only natural aluminium is in the form of Al³⁺ ions, which have to be reduced to yield the metal.

To do this, you first need to mine a massive amount of aluminium oxide ore. This is because, in 1 kilogram of ore, only ~260 grams are aluminium. The rest is oxygen, which we don't want.

The ore then has to be melted at extreme temperatures (between 950 and 1000 degrees Celcius). You then lower massive carbon electrodes, typically a few meters in diameter, inside the liquid ore, and apply a monstruous current in the order of 0.1-0.3 mega-amperes to them. This will reduce the aluminium back to its metallic form.

The next steps consists of elliminating the side products (don't forget we have ~740 grams of oxygen in our kilogram of ore) to purify the compounds. But alas, my chemist knowledge ends here, and I'll ask fellows from /r/chemicalengineering to continue.

[u/onlyever_42]

If you visit the Library of Congress and look at some of the ornate details on the ceiling you'll see aluminum moldings. Today people assume they are silver, but it's actually aluminum which was more valuable than gold or silver AND doesn't tarnish.

[u/PIP_SHORT]

From what I understand, aluminum is a lot cheaper to recycle than it is to mine, so most of the aluminum in circulation has been around for ages and was probably mined like 100 years ago.

You could have a bit of Napoleon's spoon in your beer can.

[u/PloppyCheesenose]

Both aluminum and aluminium are valid spellings. The British discoverer Humphry Davy named it aluminum, while the British and most of the world today use aluminium.

[u/TeamocilAddict]

TIL there was more than one Napoleon

[u/[deleted]]

Do you know what the fuck you can do with an aluminum tube? ALUMINUM!