Aluminium Foil
Aluminium foil is an everyday item, used to wrap sandwiches, chocolates, and other foods. Aluminium has been a useful item to society, with it the humans race have been able to create cans, tins, artwork, spoons, trays and literally anything someone could imagine. Number 13 on the periodic table with the symbol Al, Aluminium is what makes Aluminium foil. There are two types of aluminium, potassium aluminum sulfate (KAl(SO4)2·12H2O) (can be used to create crystals-video on the right) and aluminum oxide (Al2O3) (which is used to make aluminium foil). Aluminium foil is made by pressing an Aluminium ingot until it is 0.2mm thick it is then sold as aluminium foil, the short video on the right has a detailed explanation of the process (to get straight into the method of making aluminium skip to 1:45).
Aluminium is one of the most common metals on earth making up 8.1% of the earths crust. Even though it is the most abundant metal in the earths crust, it is never found as a pure substance. Aluminium has instead combined with other elements to form compounds. Examples are PAS (potassium aluminium sulfate) and aluminium oxide. Under a microscope we can see aluminium foil has an interesting molecular structure. (The image on the very left is viewed at 5μ-micrometres). Under a microscope aluminium foil looks very similar to a rice field (shown on the right). After looking at aluminium foil under a microscope it may come to mind that it doesn't appear very strong in a way this is partially true aluminium foil is very weak but its metal source, aluminium, isn't. When compressed under huge amounts of pressure aluminium can actually be crushed until it is translucent at this stage it can resist huge amounts of damage and pressure applied to it (also known as bulletproof glass).
Aluminium foil has a extremely flexible body so it is able to wrap around objects, by being 0.2mm the metal is extremely thin so it can easily be ripped and teared to a desired shape. Aluminum foil manufacturers commonly use pure aluminum, in more recent years it has become quite popular to add a variety of different alloys engineered to add strength and reduce thickness of the aluminum foil. Aluminium foil has been advanced and engineered so it can be the best possible item to use when covering food, lining an oven or just to use to make experiments, aluminium foil is one of the most useful items made by humans in a long time. |
These videos have been taken from YouTube please support the traditional makers.
|
Page created by Faith.W on the 14th of May 2015