Aluminum is a very interesting material. Though aluminum oxides are one of the most common metallic compounds in the Earth’s crust, it is almost never found in pure form and is difficult to extract, so while it is widely used as a common structural material today, it was once considered as precious metals like gold, platinum, and silver. Legend has it that Napoleon III had tableware made of aluminum for his most favored guests. (One hopes they weren’t eating tomato-based foods.) Today, aluminum is such a commonly available material that we use it for soda cans and bicycle frames.
The Wikipedia entry on aluminum has some excellent information (and no major factual excursions as far as a brief perusal reveals). It’s original high volume structural use was in aircraft where its light weight and, with suitable alloys, amenible to heat treatment giving it high tensile strength made it superior to steel. (The drawbacks are its tendency to creep, difficulty in welding, and inevitable development of stress fractures under fatigue loading, so steel is still the best general structural metal when weight is not a primary driving issue.)
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