r/todayilearned • u/TirelessGuardian • 1d ago
TIL When aluminum was first discovered, in the early 1800s, it was worth more than gold. Originally, it was hard to separate from other materials. The Washington Monument was capped with it. When a reliable method was finally found to purify it, prices plummeted from $16 ($419 today) a pound to $2.
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/05/785099705/aluminums-strange-journey-from-precious-metal-to-beer-can318
u/hulagirlslovetoparty 1d ago
Aluminum is so fuckin rad.
I don't know shit about mettalurgy, but a soft, malleable metal is cool, and then we make thin sheets of it for cooking? And it NEVER burns my hands? Fuckin love aluminum, shit is dope as hell.
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u/backcountrygoat 22h ago
Also it’s inert to investiture!
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u/JovialCider 3h ago
Cosmere was the first thing that came to mind when I read the post. In multiple settings there the technological hurdle of aluminum becoming widely accessible defines the eras.
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u/Unlimitles 1d ago
Until it gets into the bloodstream too much.
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u/RedMiah 1d ago
Yeah but that’s true of everything, especially metals. Too much iron is a fun one, gotta get your blood drained by Vlad to deal with that one.
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u/UThink17 1d ago
But on the flip side, hemoglobin is made (somewhat) of iron and without enough iron you can’t absorb oxygen.
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u/RedMiah 1d ago
Oh yeah. I was specifically talking about when you reach that hyper-toxic level, which is at least kinda hard to do unintentionally (without some sort of medical disorder).
We got lots of trace metals in our bodies that are important for things like that. If I remember my biology right (and that’s unlikely) iron is that most important one because of the hemoglobin, as you pointed out.
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u/GamiNami 1d ago
I read that you need to harvest blood from just over 2000 humans to have enough to make a sword from the iron present within.
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u/flyinggazelletg 1d ago
Hemochromatosis runs in my family, my iron levels were always just below unacceptably high levels when donating blood until I stopped eating meat. Iron is now at a normal level woo! My uncle has to get his blood drawn for hemochromatosis. So funny that it is one of the only diseases where blood letting is the recommended treatment today lol
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u/eyesmart1776 1d ago
Okay anti vaxxer
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u/Unlimitles 1d ago
Hmmm, what information do you know of that makes you believe Aluminum accumulating in the Blood is a good thing?
I’d like to look into it if you don’t mind.
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u/eyesmart1776 1d ago
Aluminum is an adjuvant in vaccines
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u/Unlimitles 1d ago
Ok, that has nothing to do with what I asked, or my previous request, stay focused and on topic please, or do you not have the information I requested?
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u/eyesmart1776 1d ago
If you think aluminum in blood is bad then you must thing the aluminum in vaccines are bad
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u/Unlimitles 1d ago
Do you have any of the information I asked for or not?
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u/eyesmart1776 1d ago
So are you against aluminum in vaccines?
Are you against injecting babies with aluminum ?
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u/Unlimitles 1d ago
You’re gaslighting.
Either have a conversation so we can be on the same page or go bother someone else.
You just barged into a conversation and disrupted it for some stupid crusade you just injected into the conversation, when you could just Provide the information I’m asking for, for the 4th time, and have a stable discussion.
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u/Fimau 22h ago
Wait until you find out how we absolutely fucking wreck the environment once again, due to unregulated business practices in south America, poisoning entire ecosystem with the iron rich waste mud that is left over after purification.
Generations lived in forests that can not sustain them any longer.
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u/Feelisoffical 1d ago
Gold was about $19 an ounce in 1800.
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u/TylerBlozak 22h ago
A nice suit back then must’ve cost around that I’d reckon
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u/youngmindoldbody 11h ago
Yes, 1800 would have found the cloth made by hand from a wooden loom. Every suit was customer tailored (had to be). Today, $2k to start and that's with machine made cloth (quite a $$ saver).
However, in 1800, suits would have been heavier and more life after the first owner. Every bit sold and resold, till just rags.
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u/Any-File4347 1d ago
I can imagine a world without aluminum but I wouldn’t want to live in it.
If we ever synthesize (at least, finish) the research on the transparent kind…hello, computer
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u/happy2harris 1d ago
Already been done. If you have an apple watch (or any modern fairly expensive watch) the front cover is probably transparent aluminium. Vey strong and scratch resistant.
(sapphire)
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u/SharkFart86 1d ago
Yep. Both sapphires and rubies are just crystalline alumina aka corundum (Al2O3) with small amounts of impurities that give them a red color (chromium) or blue color (iron and titanium).
At this point it is trivial to synthesize them. Al2O3 is super easy to make from natural aluminum sources with modern processes.
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u/Any-File4347 1d ago
Whoa! I’d like to read more about it.
I wonder what the challenges are in manufacturing
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u/smartalek75 1d ago
Stuff You Should Know has a great podcast episode on aluminium. It’s worth a listen.
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u/Unlimitles 1d ago
What do they talk about?
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u/Clitoris_Thief 1d ago
Well it nullifies all your allomantic metals if you eat it and it blocks physical and mental allomancy and surges, so it’s pretty useful.
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u/Daratirek 1d ago
You have to burn aluminum in order for it to get rid of the rest. My favorite use is that it blocks shard blades.
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u/Unlimitles 1d ago
What?! That’s completely opposite of what I’d think aluminum would do for you?
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u/PokemonSapphire 1d ago
Well you're in luck if you alloy it properly with copper, I believe, it allows you to instantly unleash your entire reserve of another metal.
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u/Unlimitles 1d ago
I was going to ask earlier, but now that you said this more specifically, it must mean that aluminum has chelation properties right?
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u/smartalek75 1d ago
It’s been a while since I listened to that episode but they discuss the history, properties, uses, recycling. I’m sure there’s more that I’ve forgotten.
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u/cupidcuntsghost 1d ago
You should already know
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u/Unlimitles 1d ago
lol thank you for informing me that I should have full Gnosis of this. But I don’t.
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u/2rascallydogs 1d ago
Aluminum is just really hard to refine and it requires a lot of energy. Alcoa manufactured most of the world's aluminum until the mid1920s and they had a monopoly in the US until WW2 when Richard Reynolds decided to get leave the family tobacco business and get involved in aluminum. Reynolds managed to get funds from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to build two factories, although Alcoa received funding to lease an additional three. In the end it was a good thing as the majority of aluminum came from France, Canada, Guiana, Italy, Arkansas and Ukraine, so as the Nazis moved into France and the Donbass, the entire supply of allied aluminum necessary for everything from tank engines to airplanes was dependent on the US, British Empire, and the Netherlands government in exile.
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u/Williamklarsko 21h ago
The allied extracted kryolit in Greenland under the war to refine aluminum.
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u/2rascallydogs 16h ago
By WW2, cryolite was usually only used as flux in the processing of bauxite to create aluminum. By then it wasn't really used as an actual source of aluminum.
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u/Rower78 1d ago
Obtaining alumina (Al2O3) from bauxite is doable with older techniques. The real problem is that it takes an absolutely beastly amount of electricity to turn alumina into aluminum. And they had none of that until recently.
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u/tanfj 1d ago
Obtaining alumina (Al2O3) from bauxite is doable with older techniques. The real problem is that it takes an absolutely beastly amount of electricity to turn alumina into aluminum. And they had none of that until recently.
Yes. To a first approximation, aluminum is solidified electricity.
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u/NennisDedry 1d ago
Hate to be that guy but you just pronounced it incorrectly…
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u/tuds_of_fun 1d ago
The Brit pronunciation makes it sound mysterious and high tech.
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u/limethebean 1d ago
Here's a fun fact: Davy, the man who coined Alumium in the UK, did so in 1808. Then he moved to America and coined Aluminum in 1812.
Presumably to troll people for the next 200 years. Otherwise I cannot fathom why he would do this.
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u/I_love-tacos 1d ago
Napoleon had a "good" set of aluminum cutlery that he only used on really special occasions, on all the other occasions he used the gold set of cutlery
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u/Chajos 1d ago
Cool thing to know going into the mistborn series by brandon sanderson. His magic system is based on different metals and aluminum plays a not insignificant role.
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u/ilovebeetrootalot 8h ago
And there are hints towards cheaper aluminium through electrolysis in the last book of era 2!
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u/zebragonzo 1d ago
May not have been the first discovery! https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/s/4E3NscPWvW
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u/jaylw314 14h ago
It's worth noting somewhere between 3 and 5% of ALL electricity produced worldwide goes to aluminum production
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u/tun3man 1d ago
Aluminum is still expensive. Here in Brazil, aluminum recycling is big business.
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u/No_Campaign_3843 1d ago
Yep. Recycling is cost effective. AFAIR 75 or 80% of all aluminium produced is still in use.
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u/omnipotentsandwich 1d ago
I think eventually this will happen to gold. It's possible to turn lead to gold through a particle accelerator. It's just an extremely expensive process. As technology advances, it won't be and gold will be worthless.
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u/314159265358979326 1d ago
It's not just an extremely expensive process, as if we didn't know how to do it, it's extremely energy-intensive. The price of energy would need to drop by orders of magnitude to justify it, especially since gold isn't intrinsically that useful in large quantities.
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u/shaithisx 1d ago
And if this happened today, the company that found the process to refine aluminum would hoard the stuff and dribble it out to maintain the high price and corner the market on the supply.
Capitalism!
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u/JustDogs7243 12h ago
They already did that back then.
Imagine if the government ran things, we would be in aluminum lines and bread lines.
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u/StrictlyInsaneRants 1d ago
Yeah I remember seeing austrian-hungarian aluminium helmets who only the absolute elite wore. Seemed quite amusing.
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u/marcusregulus 1d ago
Aluminum oxide is truly a marriage made in the heavens. The reason it is so expensive to refine into aluminum metal is because of the lattice energy of the aluminum oxide crystal structure.
Btw, when aluminum oxide is fairly crystalline and contains small amounts of chromium, it is called a ruby. Any other color than red is called a sapphire.
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u/coolguy420weed 1d ago
It still seems like a kind of weird thing to use as a display of wealth honestly, it kind of just looks like every other metal. Iridium is worth more than gold right now and I don't think anybody uses it as bling for that reason.
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u/kingbane2 21h ago
isn't iridium notoriously difficult to work with? it's really hard isn't it? it has a crazy high melting point, like 700 or 800 degrees c more than titanium. this would make it a nightmare to forge or mold into any kind of intricate shape.
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u/coolguy420weed 20h ago
And aluminum used to be really hard to seperate form other materials. Either way, both make for expensive and boring looking cutlery, but only one was ever actually used for that purpose.
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u/kingbane2 20h ago
yes it was very hard to separate, but very very easy to work with once separated. kind of like gold, rare but easy to work with.
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u/Artful3000 1d ago
Wait till you see what happens when the first consignment of asteroid-mined gold returns to earth.
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u/Unlimitles 1d ago
So I’m guessing the stuff attached to it was what made it more valuable before they found out how to separate them?
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u/oxero 1d ago
No... In simple terms aluminum is only found naturally mixed with other rocks unlike an ore like iron, copper, etc where you can basically smelt and draw out the metal easily. When they discovered aluminum, it was very difficult to process and extract the aluminum into a more pure form to work with. The scarcity of aluminum because it was difficult to manufacture drove up the rarity and price. They found a better method to extract it and prices dropped as it was no longer considered rare.
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u/PrinsHamlet 1d ago
Fun fact:
The only actual mining adventure on record in Greenland revolved around a Cryolite mine.
Cryolite was (is, but now it's synthetic) used as a flux in the process to extract aluminium.
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u/TirelessGuardian 1d ago
The other stuff actually ruined the aluminum because it wasn’t pure and useable. It was hard to get just the aluminum. That is why despite being so common, usable aluminum was rare. But once methods to purity it came about, it became much easier to get pure aluminum and that’s that made the value go down.
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u/TirelessGuardian 1d ago