Haven’t you all heard? The world is about to run out of glass!
Damn, you mean no more jars? Now where am I gonna keep all this sand?
I was told by my high school biology teacher that the Challenger was shot down by a Russian missile. She was dead serious. There are some serious wackos that get to be high school teachers.
That’s my area. The name is from ALuminum Company Of America, for anyone who didn’t get that. I once applied for a job there and they had a ton of applicants come in and take tests, during which they told us that something like %75 or %80 of all the aluminum produced in the past 150 years is still in circulation after being recycled numerous times. Dunno if it’s true, but I suspect they’d know.
As for the job, it wasn’t really what I applied for. They wanted people for the smelting area where temperatures are 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter with all the doors open. Everyone works in there for either 5 or 15 minute shifts, I don’t remember which. They said anyone who wasn’t interested could leave and skip the tests, but the pretty 20 year old girl next to me didn’t so I stayed too, although I certainly hadn’t applied to be a smelter. Apparently, I did well on the tests, but I didn’t schedule an interview.
That’s that can, do; those that can’t, teach.
(Really, I considered being a teacher prior to realizing they make next to nothing.)
Now that I’m home and fed. I’ve found a nice table breaking down industrial usage of copper thusly:
Building Wire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16%
Plumbing & Heating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14%
Automotive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11%
Electric Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9%
Air Conditioning & Commercial Refrigeration. . . . . . .8%
Telecommunications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7%
Factory Equipment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6%
Electronics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6%
Appliances & Extension Cords . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3%
Other. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20%
TOTAL-----------------------------------------------> 100%
I’m a bit surprised plumbing and heating is as high as it is, but this was written nearly 12 years ago; I’d wager the figures have changed somewhat now that PVC and PEX plumbing are more common.
ETA: I wonder what comprises “Other.”
Just to make a huge overstatement (so save the flames) aluminum is the poster child for recycling. The original manufacturing requires huge amounts of energy but recycling requires something like 1/10 as much energy. Aluminum manufacturers were getting into recycling before anybody gave a rats ass about the term. It made economic sense for them. It wasn’t altruistic.
Steel was getting recycled but mainly because there were so many junk cars. The energy requirement ratio isn’t as dramatic.
The Hippy factoid of the 70’s (when beverage manufacturers were converting to aluminum cans) was that the military was seeing a shortage of high quality aluminum for producing fighter planes. All the hippies cheered. Stop the war . . . drink more beer! Of course, this had to do with manufacturing capacity not resource availability.
It seems reasonable to include the metal and its alloys in stock for machining/fabricating/forming in industries other than listed in the compilation and to note that some small percent is used in steelmaking.
“Stop the war . . . drink more beer!”
Ever an emulable refrain.
You could always import some of that Aluminium the rest of the world uses. Plenty of it, it looks the same and works nearly as well for most purposes.
It’s not just copper, there are scares for all kinds of materials e.g. Indium which according to the American Geological Society is as abundent as silver, but both are predicted to run out in 10-20 years depending on which predictions you believe. For the record indium is used as a transparent conductor and as such is used in LCD screens, LEDs, solar cells and other electrical devices.
And of course there are so many people that tell us in the auto industry that we’re stupid for not making lightweight, fuel-efficient vehicles out of aluminum instead of so much steel, and, oh yeah, they’ve got to cost the same as steel cars do today. :rolleyes:
I had a teacher like this once, back in the early 90’s She said that in ten years humans would breath in all the worlds oxygen because of the population around the world. She had charts and math equations that looked very convincing. After a few weeks it turned out she “challenged” us to disprove her theory. She wanted us to question it, but because she was so convincing, which was part of the plan, we all took it as fact. In the end she obviously reassured us that the worlds oxygen would be fine! Have your son challenge his teacher, that might be what he’s looking for!
