{"id":7510,"date":"2025-08-06T07:15:59","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T07:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alcircle.com\/blog\/?p=7510"},"modified":"2025-08-06T07:16:45","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T07:16:45","slug":"why-aluminium-is-the-magic-metal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alcircle.com\/blog\/why-aluminium-is-the-magic-metal","title":{"rendered":"Why aluminium is the magic metal?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The history of aluminium is relatively short since it was discovered only in the nineteenth century, yet it has become an essential part of everyday life. Therefore, aluminium is an attractive material for many applications, including transportation, electrical, packaging and food industries, architecture, renewable energy production and batteries and it is also included in the critical raw materials list of many countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also a recyclable metal, which provides both environmental and economic advantages compared with primary aluminium smelting, which is an energy-intensive process in an energy-constrained world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From a socio-cultural perspective, aluminium is considered a symbol of modernity and urbanisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From fiction to reality<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to science fiction, especially when the relationship between science and science fiction is discussed, one of the first names that comes to mind is Jules Verne.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Jules Verne published his book “From Earth to the Moon” 160 years ago (1865), where the spacecraft that carried the ‘first astronauts<\/strong>‘ was made of aluminium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following dialogue occurs in the seventh chapter of the book:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What is to be done, then?” said Elphinstone, with a puzzled air.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Employ another metal instead of iron.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Copper?” said Morgan.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“No! that would be too heavy. I have better than that to offer.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What then?” asked the major.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Aluminium!” replied Barbicane.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Aluminium?” cried his three colleagues in chorus.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Unquestionably, my friends. This valuable metal possesses the whiteness of silver, the indestructibility of gold, the tenacity of iron, the fusibility of copper, the lightness of glass. It is easily wrought, is very widely distributed, forming the base of most of the rocks, is three times lighter than iron and seems to have been created for the express purpose of furnishing us with the material for our projectile.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But, my dear president,” said the major, “is not the cost price of aluminium extremely high?”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It was so at its first discovery, but it has fallen now to nine dollars a pound.”\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Jules Verne devised his spacecraft with this singularity, it was only four decades since the Danish physicist Christian Oersted (1777-1851) had first extracted aluminium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The revolution that started with the beer can: Recycling<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The recycling revolution began in the 1950s when Coors Brewing Co. introduced the aluminium can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before then, a can of beer meant a tin-lined steel container that affected the quality and flavour. Coors President Bill Coors became interested in aluminium as a better container because beer chills quickly in aluminium, it\u2019s light and less expensive to transport and it doesn\u2019t alter the taste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And aluminium is 100 percent recyclable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, in 1959, Bill put Coors beer in a 7-ounce, two-piece recyclable aluminium can.<\/p>\n\n\n

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(source: www.molsoncoorsblog.com)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recycling<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Recycling pays multiple sustainability dividends:<\/p>\n\n\n\n