Transparent Aluminum a Reality

TuballoyThunder writes "Many of us remember the scene from Star Trek IV where Scotty barters the formula for transparent aluminum for a small run. It now appears that we can now add transparent aluminum to the science fact column."

Comments

Aluminium!

[paulhar]

Grr...

Re:Aluminium!

[HugePedlar]

Interestingly (or not, as the case may be) the discoverer of "aluminium" decided to call it "aluminum" but the British Chemical Naming Commission (or whatever they're called) insisted that all metals end in "ium" so they overrode him.

Transparent Alumin(i)um

[slittle]

See also here for earlier developments in this area.

Note to mods:

[mrchaotica]

The parent isn't offtopic; you just didn't get the Star Trek IV reference:

[after Scotty tries to talk into the mouse]

TECHNICIAN: "Just use the keyboard!"

SCOTTY: "The keyboard? How quaint."

Sapphire

[obender]

Sapphire which is basically a crystal of aluminium oxide has been synthetised almost 100 years ago and is commonly used nowadays. Some non-scratch watches use that instead of glass.

Other things realizable by R-ing TFA

[Atario]

• Either someone doesn't know how to make a proper trademark symbol, or else the Air Force has a wierder marketing department that one would imagine ("'ALONtm'? Alontum? With odd capitalization? Wha? Is this like that whole Sony Wega/Vega nonsense?").
• Ceramic can be transparent
• It's possible for something to be "virtually scratch resistant" -- practically, but not technically, offering some resistance to being scratched

Re:How's it pronounced?

[Tidal Flame]

Either, really. It can be pronounced and spelled either aluminum or aluminium. Typically, Americans and Canadians pronounce and spell it "aluminum." I can't speak for other countries...

Here's the history behind the difference (from the Wikipedia article):

In 1808, Humphry Davy originally proposed the name alumium while trying to isolate the new metal electrolytically from the mineral alumina. In 1812 he changed the name to aluminum to match its Latin root. The same year, an anonymous contributor to the Quarterly Review, a British political-literary journal, objected to aluminum, and proposed the name aluminium.

"Aluminium, for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound. (Q. Review VIII. 72, 1812. Cited in OED.)"

This had the advantage of conforming to the -ium suffix precedent set by other newly discovered elements of the period: potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, and strontium (all of which Davy had isolated himself). Nevertheless, -um spellings for elements were not unknown at the time: platinum, which had been known to Europeans since the 16th century, molybdenum, which was discovered in 1778, and tantalum, which was discovered in 1802, all have spellings ending in -um. For the thirty years following its discovery, both the -um and -ium endings were used interchangeably in the scientific literature.

Curiously, the United States adopted the -ium for most of the 19th century with aluminium appearing in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. However Charles Martin Hall selected the -um spelling in an advertising handbill for his new efficient electrolytic method for the production of aluminium, four years after he had patented the process in 1888. Although this spelling may have been an accident, Hall's domination of production of the metal ensured that the spelling aluminum became the standard in North America, even though the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913 continued to use the -ium version.

In 1926, the American Chemical Society officially decided to use aluminum in its publications, and American dictionaries typically label the spelling aluminium as a British variant.

Bad Trek Trivia

[Archibald Buttle]

Scotty doesn't trade the formula for transparent aluminium for a small run of the stuff. He trades for a quantity of perspex.

Dr. Nichols says it'll take him "years to even calculate the matrix". Besides that, the stuff they delivered and installed was clearly perspex - it would have been much thinner had it been transparent aluminium.

Re:Humvee Windshields

[hidispenser]

Humvees normally cost the military about $125,000 each. Installing Level I (the highest) armor costs an additional $125,000. http://www.reflector.com/news/content/shared/news/ world/stories/08/11TROOPS_ARMOR.html/ The article in the link states that the military's goal is to get every Humvee in the fleet to that state of armor. So $16,560 to $24,840 is therefore reasonable for an entire fleet to have.

M-44 sniper rifle?

[Yonder Way]

"In a June 2004demonstration, an ALONtm test pieces held up to both a .30 caliber Russian M-44 sniper rifle [...]"

Never trust a journalist to get gun facts straight.

The M44 is a carbine version of the Mosin-Nagant, very short, easy to carry, but with nothing better than iron sights. It is about as far from a "sniper rifle" as anything you can see.

It has the coolest integral bayonet, though.

On the upside, the M-44 uses the same cartridge as the current Romanian "sniper" rifle, the PSL. The M44 has a short barrel so a steel-cored 7.62x54R projectile won't reach the same sort of velocities as it would out of a PSL rifle but it should be a pretty effective test against the sort of "armor piercing" light arms that any terrorist not carrying an RPG would be likely to have handy.

Not quite correct

[ViXX0r]

Scotty didn't exchange the formula for a small run of transparent aluminum, it would have taken years for the plant to study the formula and tool up their factory to produce the stuff. He traded the formula for a large, thick sheet of plexiglass or similar that the company would have had on hand or actually be able to manufacture at that time.

Re:A Great Send-Off

[jellomizer]

This story is starting to become almost a yearly tradition on Slashdot.

Transparent Aluminum a Reality
On October 18th, 2005 with 231 comments
TuballoyThunder writes "Many of us remember the scene from Star Trek IV where Scotty barters the formula for transparent aluminum for a small run. It now...

Transparent Aluminum Is Here
On August 23rd, 2004 with 625 comments
Alien54 writes "Scientists in the US have developed a novel technique to make bulk quantities of glass from alumina for the first time. (link includes a...

Transparent Aluminium
On February 20th, 2002 with 368 comments
Lynx writes "As the german magazine Spiegel reports, scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies have developed a transparent tile made...

And that was from the first page of the search screen ordered by rank.

Re:A Great Send-Off

[AndersOSU]

To be fair this is a different material than the previous two articles, the first two describe an alumina glass, whereas this article describes an aluminum oxynitride ceramic.

Re:A Great Send-Off

[Hognoxious]

To be even fairer, alumina isn't alumin{i}um and neither is alumin{i}um oxynitride, but all the headlines imply that it is.

Re:Super Polish

[iq in binary]

Polishing (like case hardening) belongs to a normal metallic property called work hardening. You work a metal it will become harder (but normally also more brittle). In fact it is rarer to have a metal that won't work harden than not. Time to go back to metal shop!!

Go back? Ok, I'm in one every day.

While you're right about metals work hardening, you're wrong about how often it happens. Quite frankly, it doesn't unless you're either extremely stupid or even more so insane. Even soft magnetics like Cast Iron don't work harden until extremely high temperatures are reached. Something to the tune of 650-1100F, depending on the hardness rating you wish to achieve. If you're reaching temperatures that high before the part is finished, well, you're either cutting it off at the foundry or you're about to be fired. The methods used to actually harden materials in a noticeable fashion are specifically designed to superheat the part. Magnetics such as steel and any iron based material will be heated until red, blue or white hot to achieve hardening. This process is called annealing. Other metals are generally coated with a harder metal, not more than a thousand of an inch or two in thickness; this generally achieves the same affect.

Polishing however, is not generally meant to harden, and rarely does. When a part or surface is polished, part of that surface is actually worn away while polish is deposited. This is the only way to achieve mirror finish, if the part has been turned or faced the surface will have markings on it from the tools used to cut it. Polishing is the process of actually wearing away material to relieve the markings, and depositing polish to increase shine. People should note that the more reflective a metal surface is, the finer the finish. Mirror finish generally denotes a "256 dp finish", required often by aerospace or military applications. The dumbass of a parent knows nothing of what he's talking about, and needs himself to open up a machinist's handbook.

No, you're wrong

[ifwm]

"In 1808, Humphry Davy originally proposed the name alumium while trying to isolate the new metal electrolytically from the mineral alumina. In 1812 he changed the name to aluminum to match its Latin root. The same year, an anonymous contributor to the Quarterly Review, a British political-literary journal, objected to aluminum, and proposed the name aluminium."

So aluminum was the first spelling, which was later change by language nazis because it didn't sound right.

Don't blame us Americans for trying to be historically accurate.

Sapphire is transparent Aluminum

[Chuck_McDevitt]

Transparent Aliminum has been around for all our lifetimes: Sapphire = Aluminum Oxide. My watch has a sapphire crystal... Yours might too.