INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT ALUMINIUM

Not much is generally known about aluminium so here are some interesting facts about the metal. The metal is spelt ‘Aluminum’ in the USA.

·         Aluminium is by far the most common metal on the Earth’s surface. It makes up 8.1% of the Earth’s crust. However Aluminium never occurs naturally in its pure form. In the ground it is combined with other chemicals as minerals in ore rocks. The major source of aluminum is layers of soft ore called bauxite, which is mostly aluminum hydroxide.

·         Aluminium powders were used 5000 years ago for dyeing. Pure aluminum was first made in 1825 by the Danish scientist Hans Christian Oersted, Aluminium production was the first industrial process to use hydroelectric power when Paul Heroult set up a plant on the river Rhine in 1887. Each year 21 million tonnes of aluminum are made, mostly from bauxite dug up in Brazil and New Guinea. Aluminium oxide can crystallize into one of the hardest minerals, corundum, which is used to sharpen knives.

·         Aluminium is silver in color when freshly made, but it quickly tarnishes to white in the air. It is very slow to corrode. Aluminium is one of the lightest of all the metals. It weighs just one-third as much as steel. Aluminium melts at 650°C and boils at 2450°C.

·         Although aluminum is common in the ground, it is worth recycling because extracting it from bauxite uses a lot of energy. It only takes 5% of the original amount of energy to recycle aluminium.

Name of Element : Aluminium
Symbol of Element : Al
Atomic Number of Aluminium : 13
Atomic Mass: 26.981539 amu
Melting Point: 660.37 °C - 933.52 °K
Boiling Point: 2467.0 °C - 2740.15 °K
Number of Protons/Electrons in Aluminium : 13
Number of Neutrons in Aluminium : 14
Crystal Structure: Cubic
Density @ 293 K: 2.702 g/cm3
Colour of Aluminium : silvery-white