History of Aluminum
When most of us think of aluminum, we think of either aluminum foil or aluminum cans. It's not hard to understand why those two things come to mind, after all, they are the most prevalent uses for this material. Who hasn't cracked open a nice cold can of soda or grilled vegetables with the all purpose aluminum foil over the barbeque? But what exactly is aluminum?
If you know your chemistry, you'll remember that aluminum is in fact an element, with an atomic number of 13. It is also the most abundant metal on earth, making up about 8% of Earth's solid weight. Due to its highly reactive nature, aluminum does not occur as a free metal, instead it's found in over 270 different minerals, the major one being bauxite ore. While the Greeks and Romans used aluminum for dying and styptics, it wasn't until 1825 that the metal was first created by Hans Christian Orsted. From there, we used aluminum for statues and buildings (the apex of the Washington Monument is made of aluminum) due to its high resistivity to corrosion. Aluminum was extremely expensive due to the expensive manufacturing process (it was actually the same value of silver). In 1886, however, the creation of the Hall-Heroult electrolytic process made extracting aluminum much cheaper and also helped kick off the creation of Alcoa.
From 1886, we've continued to develop aluminum for our purposes. In 1910 aluminum foil replaced tin foil, and was first used for wrapping LifeSavers, candy bars and gum in 1913. The first all aluminum soft drinks were R.C. Cola and Dite-Rite Cola in 1964. Today, almost all sodas are sold in aluminum cans as well as many beers. It should then come as no surprise that aluminum is the most widely used non-ferrous metal, with global productions over 30 million tonnes. Only iron exceeds this production. But of course, we use aluminum for almost everything from our cars to our MacBooks. One of the other great things about aluminum is that it is 100% recyclable without any loss of its natural qualities. In fact, aluminum recycling has been common practice since the 1960s with the introduction of all aluminum beverage cans.
Aluminum isn't just good for practical uses, but also for art. There are numerous artists that use aluminum in their sculptures like Walter Woloschuk and Stephanie Weber. In fact, it has been used for art as long ago as 1893 with the statue of Anteros in London.
It's clear to see that aluminum has had a huge impact in our lives from the Ancient Greeks to modern day. Of course with the good comes the bad, and there has been controversy over aluminum in deodorant. Some researchers claim there may be a link that aluminum may cause breast cancer and has also been implicated as a factor in Alzheimer's. Aluminum also reduces plant growth by making soil more acidic, though there are some plants, like wheat, that have an aluminum tolerance that is controlled by one gene.
Without aluminum though, where would we be today? Probably drinking out of glass bottles and sitting in uncomfortable and heavy lawn chairs. Aluminum has drastically improved our lifestyle despite some of the negative side effects and definitely made those 4th of July barbeques that much better.