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The Sexiest Metal
jonerik writes "Denver's weekly Westword magazine has this article on titanium and the attempts to break it out of its traditional aerospace/defense industry niche, including its growing use in architecture, computers, jewelry, sports, knives, cars, medicine, and other areas. The upside: It's as strong as steel but weighs half as much, it doesn't rust, and it's fairly plentiful. The downside: It's expensive compared to steel and aluminum and its high melting point makes it difficult to work with under some conditions. Still, it's nice to see it being used in other applications." Heck, I know someone who used it as his wedding ring. Pretty cool, actually.
Titanium is only truly useful in something where size doesn't matter. In a bike frame, sure, you can make it thicker and nobody's going to notice but for many other things where having it 3x as thick is going to matter titanium isn't as useful. A titanium knife that's as strong as a steel knige would have to be near 3x as thick...try cutting something with a 1/4" thick metal bar sometime.