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

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.

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.

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.

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.