Aluminum

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[b][url=http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960724.html]Radioactive Aluminum Clouds in the Milky Way[/url][/b] Credit: NASA, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory

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Explanation: When massive stars explode they create large radioactive blast clouds which expand into interstellar space. As the radioactive elements decay, they produce gamma-rays. Possible locations of these stellar explosions known as supernovae, are indicated by the bright clumps in this map of the central regions of our Milky Way Galaxy. The map was made by a telescope onboard NASA's orbiting Compton Gamma Ray Observatory using detectors sensitive to gamma rays from the decay of radioactive aluminum.

Oct. 9, 2010, ALI (Advanced Land Imager) shot of Ajkai alumina plant The alumina plant along the right edge incorporates both bright blue & brick red reservoirs. Sludge cut a channel through the northwest corner of the waste reservoir and spread onto nearby fields.

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<<On October 4, 2010, an accident occurred at the Ajkai Timföldgyár alumina (aluminum oxide) plant in western Hungary. A corner wall of a waste-retaining pond broke, releasing a torrent of toxic red sludge down a local stream. Several nearby towns were inundated, including Kolontar and Devecser, where the sludge was 2 meters deep in places. Four people were killed immediately, likely from drowning, and several more were missing. Dozens of residents were hospitalized for chemical burns.

The sludge forms a red-orange streak running west from the plant. The wide-area view shows the spill thinning but remaining discernible for several kilometers to the west. The New York Times reported that the stream nearest the plant empties into larger rivers. The BBC reported that authorities were pouring plaster into the Marcal River in hopes of preventing the sludge from reaching the Danube River.

The red sludge is a byproduct of refining bauxite into alumina, which is used in the manufacture of aluminum and other products. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) suggested that heavy metals in the sludge could soak into the ground and be absorbed by vegetation, potentially causing environmental effects for decades. In the short term, the sludge swept away cars, filled homes, swamped agricultural fields, damaged bridges, and forced hundreds to evacuate.>>

[rstevenson]

Alumina
Alumina is the name given to aluminium oxide (Al2O3), which is extracted from bauxite via a refining process known as the Bayer process. In general, it takes about two tonnes of bauxite to produce one tonne of alumina.

Refining takes place over four main stages:

1. Digestion: The bauxite is ground in mills and mixed with hot caustic soda at high temperatures and pressure to dissolve alumina in the ore, thus separating it from non-soluble impurities such as silica, iron and titanium compounds in the ore.
2. Clarification: The caustic soda and alumina solution passes into rows of thickener tanks where solid impurities sink to the bottom as a fine, red mud. The impurities are washed several times with water and disposed of in tailings dams on site. The remaining solution of alumina trihydrate is filtered to make it even clearer.
3. Precipitation: The alumina trihydrate solution is then cooled, concentrated and stirred in open-top tanks until it forms into crystals. This part of the process can take several days. Pure alumina is added to this mixture to assist with the formation of alumina trihydrate crystals.
4. Calcination: The crystals are then washed, filtered and heated in gas-fired kilns at temperatures greater than 1100°C to remove water molecules. The final product is a fine, dry, white powder, which is alumina. Alumina is then cooled and stored.

Aluminium
Alumina is composed of both aluminium and oxygen, which is separated during the smelting process to produce aluminium metal. About two tonnes of alumina is required to produce one tonne of aluminium.

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Bauxite was named after the village Les Baux in southern France,
where it was first recognised as containing aluminium
and named by the French geologist Pierre Berthier in 1821.

Bauxite output in 2005

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<<Tin Men is a 1987 comedy film written and directed by Barry Levinson and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Danny DeVito and Barbara Hershey.

Ernest Tilley (Danny DeVito) and Bill "BB" Babowsky (Richard Dreyfuss) are "tin men" — door-to-door aluminum siding salesmen in Baltimore in 1963. Working for different companies, they are prepared to do almost anything — legal or illegal — to close a sale. BB buys a shiny Cadillac to maintain his image of success and almost immediately crashes into another Cadillac driven by Tilley (all "tin men" drive a Cadillac). It is not clear who is at fault for the accident (BB is entering the street from the dealer's garage door, in reverse but very slowly, while Tilley was clearly distracted despite having the right of way). This generates a spate of road rage and the two rivals vow to do anything to get back at the other. BB seduces Tilley's wife as an act of revenge, not knowing that Tilley wants to leave her anyway. Exhausted by their rivalry, the two men decide to play a game of pool to decide who should get her. BB loses, but he does not honor the bet. A newly formed Maryland Home Improvement Commission charged with uprooting corrupt sales practices in the home improvements industry then calls both men before them and takes away their licenses. Reconciled to their fate, the two men start sharing new business ideas together.

• Sam (Jackie Gayle): [Sam and Tilley go out to bar to celebrate a sale that Tilley has made to break a long dry spell] You know, Tilley, I'm beginning to believe in God.
  
  Ernest Tilley: Yeah me too!
  
  Sam: No, you don't know what I mean. I'm beginning to think about God more.
  
  Ernest Tilley (Danny DeVito): What, you were never one of those atheists, were you?
  
  Sam: No, I'm not sayin' that. It's just that I'm beginning to give God more thought.
  
  Ernest Tilley: What, did you have some kind of religious experience or something.
  
  Sam: Well, yeah, the other day I took the wife to lunch, we went and has some smorgasboard, and it just kinda happened.
  
  Ernest Tilley: [Gags for a second at this] At the smorg... you found God at the smorgasboard?
  
  Sam: Well, yeah, I'm looking at all this food, I see all these vegetables, and I think, all these things came outta the ground. I see tomatoes, outta the ground, carrots, outta the ground, radishes outta the ground. And I think, all of these things come outta the ground. And I'm just talkin' about the vegetables, I haven't gotten to the fruits yet. And I think, how can that be? How can all these things come outta the ground? With all these things comin' outta the ground, there must be a God.

[BMAONE23]

SCOTTY
I notice you're still working with
polymers.

NICHOLS
(mystified)
Sill? What else would I be working
with?

SCOTTY
Ah, what else indeed? Let me put it
another way: how thick would a piece
of your plexiglass need to be at 60
feet by 10 feet to withstand the
pressure of 18,000 cubic feet of
water?

NICHOLS
That's easy: 6 inches. We carry
stuff that big in stock.

SCOTTY
Yes, I noticed. Now suppose -- just
suppose -- I could show you a way to
manufacture a wall that would do the
same job but was only an inch thick.
would that be worth something to
you, eh?

NICHOLS
... Are you joking?

BONES
He never jokes... Perhaps the
professor could use your computer.

NICHOLS
Please...

He gestures, and Scotty sits at a nearby Macintosh. He
surveys the machine quizzically, clears his throat, and
in a loud voice says:

SCOTTY
Computer --

Bones steps in quickly, picks up the "Mouse" and shoves
it into Scotty's hand. Scotty looks at the mouse,
baffled, then puts it to his lips like a mike.

SCOTTY
(continuing)
Hello? Computer...?

NICHOLS
(bewildered)
Just use the keyboard...

SCOTTY
The keyboard... How quaint.

Then, preparing his fingers like a concert pianist, he
plunges to work furiously.

114 CLOSE - COMPUTER SCREEN 114

An awesome series of figures and graphics are
appearing. PULL BACK to reveal Scotty, now master of
the keyboard, while Nichols watches in awe, next to
Bones. with a flourish, Scotty hits a last command,
and a wondrous three dimensional graphic appears.

NICHOLS
(wide-eyed)
Transparent aluminum?

SCOTTY
That's the ticket, laddie.

NICHOLS
... But it would take years just to
figure out the dynamics of this
matrix...!

BONES
You'll be rich beyond the dreams of
avarice.

SCOTTY
So, is it worth something? Or
should I just punch "clear"...

NICHOLS
No!
(then)
No... What did you have in mind...?

BONES
A moment alone, please.

BONES
(continuing)
You know, if we give him the
formula, we'll be altering the
future.

SCOTTY
Why? how do you know he didn't
invent the thing!

Transparent aluminum, a new state of matter the soft x-ray bombardmet method

The new transparent armor being tested by the Air Force, Transparent aluminum

[Chris Peterson]

If you'd like some transparent aluminum for yourself, you can get it pretty inexpensively here.

1904.jpg (6.26 KiB) Viewed 952 times

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If you'd like some transparent aluminum for yourself, you can get it pretty inexpensively here.

Technically, this is transparent alumina not transparent aluminum:
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<<Transparent aluminium is a state of aluminium achieved by bombarding a thin (50 nm) Al foil with soft X-ray laser radiation (wavelength 13.5 nm). The short laser pulse knocks out a core L-shell electron from every aluminium atom without breaking the crystalline structure of the metal making it transparent to soft X-rays of the same wavelength. This phenomenon is called saturable absorption. The thus produced transient state of aluminium is as dense as ordinary matter but can only exist for an extremely short period of time, as the energy required to maintain the high temperature which would be necessary to hold it in this state would be enormous. To create transparent aluminium, more power than is used by an entire city had to be focused into a dot with a diameter of less than one-twentieth the thickness of a human hair, and then could only maintain the transparent state for 40 femtoseconds.>>

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<<Many ceramic materials, both glassy and crystalline, have found use as optically transparent materials in various forms from bulk solid-state components to high surface area forms such as thin films, coatings and fibers. Such devices have found widepread use for various applications in the electro-optical field including: optical fibers for guided lightwave transmission, optical switches, laser amplifiers and lenses, hosts for solid-state lasers and optical window materials for gas lasers, and infrared (IR) heat seeking devices for missile guidance systems and IR night vision.

While single-crystalline ceramics may be largely defect-free (particularly within the spatial scale of the incident light wave), optical transparency in polycrystalline materials is limited by the amount of light which is scattered by their microstructural features. The amount of light scattering therefore depends on the wavelength of the incident radiation, or light.

For example, since visible light has a wavelength scale on the order of a micrometer, or 'micron' (one millionth of a meter), scattering centers will have dimensions on a similar spatial scale. Most ceramic materials, such as alumina and its compounds, are formed from fine powders, yielding a fine grained polycrystalline microstructure which is filled with scattering centers comparable to the wavelength of visible light. Thus, they are generally opaque as opposed to transparent materials. Recent nanoscale technology has, however, made possible the production of (poly)crystalline transparent ceramics such as alumina Al2O3, yttria alumina garnet (YAG), and neodymium-doped Nd:YAG.>>st and notoriety. Basic applications include lasers and cutting tools, transparent armor windows, night vision devices (NVD) and nose cones for heat seeking missiles. Currently available infrared (IR) transparent materials typically exhibit a trade-off between optical performance and mechanical strength. For example, sapphire (crystalline alumina) is very strong, but lacks full transparency throughout the 3-5 micrometer mid-IR range. Yttria is fully transparent from 3-5 micrometers, but lacks sufficient strength, hardness, and thermal shock resistance for high-performance aerospace applications. Not surprisingly, a combination of these two materials in the form of the yttria-alumina garnet (YAG) has proven to be one of the top performers in the field.

In 1961, GE began selling transparent alumina Lucalox bulbs. In 2004, Anatoly Rosenflanz and colleagues at 3M used a "flame-spray" technique to alloy aluminium oxide (or alumina) with rare-earth metal oxides in order to produce high strength glass-ceramics with good optical properties. The method avoids many of the problems encountered in conventional glass forming and may be extensible to other oxides. This goal has been readily accomplished and amply demonstrated in laboratories and research facilities worldwide using the emerging chemical processing methods encompassed by the methods of sol-gel chemistry and nanotechnology.>>

[emc]

Transparent aluminum! another example of art transitioning into that other realm… and to think, it started with cave wall paintings.

[Chris Peterson]

Technically, this is transparent alumina not transparent aluminum

Technically. But I think it's as close as we're going to get.