• Kroxx@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Team aluminum all the way. A higher up where I work is obsessed with stainless steel, he gets these monstrous heavy duty tables made out of SS that hold objects 1/3 of their weight. Makes lab rearranging a nightmare lol.

    • Wogi@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Aluminum is where it’s at, and where it is, is everywhere.

      Your cans? Aluminum. Your car? Mostly aluminum. Old wiring, you better believe that’s aluminum. Your fucking phone screen is aluminum, sand paper is aluminum, half the birth stones are all aluminum let’s fucking goooo baybee

      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        Most cars are still steel. Source I work on cars in New England. So much rust, even on the ones with aluminum bodies, at least wherever it can touch a dissimilar metal and becomes a battery.

        And crucially the important parts that keep it from exploding (cylinder liners) and save you in a crash (crumple and bumper cores) are almost all steel. Because it deforms better with simpler engineering.

        See also iron brakes in most cars hardened steel bearings everywhere.

        • Wogi@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I was referring to the engine block and pistons being aluminum. I assume chassis and many of the critical spinning bits are still steel or iron.

          It’s also mostly a shit post. I’m a machinist and I am surrounded by aluminum in funny forms.

          • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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            5 months ago

            Yeah I’m mostly just shitting on it for fun too. But the pistons don’t work very long without steel rings, wrist pins and big end bolts.

            The problem is we have to bring copper, brass and other fancy metals in them though, because the all spin on oil cushion bearings. Unless we’re talking Babbitt bushings from the early 1900s.

    • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
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      5 months ago

      If you really want to stop the stainless steel obsession, you could start cleaning the benches with bleach and not rinsing again afterwards. The corrosion will set in quickly.

      Aluminum will stain, but it won’t start rusting.

    • abraham_linksys@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      Us Americans are too excited about making stuff with our Uh-loo-min-um that we just skip pronouncing some of the vowels

      • VonCesaw@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Guy that named it called it Aluminum

        Weirdo types that decided they were in charge of naming things decided to name it Aluminium so it “matched” the likes of other metals like titanium, iridium, etc

        • lud@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          And thanks for that. Aluminum is a stupid ass name.

        • hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de
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          5 months ago

          Guy that named it called it Aluminum, Alumium, and Aluminium. Aluminium stuck, even in the US.

          Then some weirdo types decided they were in charge of naming things in the US decided it needs to be Aluminum. It took them about 50-90 years to succeed.

        • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          No, the guy who discovered it called it Alumium, after Alum. Both Aluminum and Aluminium were later constructions by journals on opposite sides of the pond.

        • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Guy that named it called it Aluminum

          Let me guess: you pronounce GIF as Jif just because the creator is a peanut butter obsessed weirdo who couldn’t pronounce “graphics”?

          • PoopingCough@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            couldn’t pronounce “graphics”

            That’s not how acronym pronunciation works though. We don’t pronounce them based on the words they stand for, otherwise we would pronounce NASA, SCUBA, LASER, etc. differently. Both pronunciations have valid arguments so why can’t we just accept both and stop being weird about it.

            • ditty@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              Because I arbitrarily decided it’s gif 13 years ago and anyone who says it the other way is wrong 😡😡😡

  • sparkle@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I can’t think of many things you encounter every day that just use straight iron. Only alloys that use iron

    Meanwhile, you’ll use very pure aluminum all the time

      • HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Uh, I hate to break it to you, but literally all the iron in the human body is either part of a protein or bound to other molecules. It’s not an alloy per se, but it isn’t exactly pure iron

    • labsin@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      Pure aluminium is only used when you need to have very little reactivity.

      General construction steel has >98% weight iron. Around the same as most aluminium alloys.

      • sparkle@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Really now? I thought most steel had way more carbon & chromium/nickel/manganese than that. I guess I underestimate how little is needed to make iron no longer mushy.

        • general_kitten@sopuli.xyz
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          5 months ago

          It is mainly only in stainless steels that have anything other than iron in high concentrations, they might have something like 30% of their weight elements other than iron

    • Ohmmy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      Sounds like aluminum is a loner and iron plays well with others. I’d bet there is still more iron encountered every day than aluminum even if the aluminum is pure and the iron is alloyed.

    • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Perhaps so, but one might argue that human tech relies more on iron than any other metal - because of its magnetic properties. We need iron to generate and manipulate electricity.

  • DPRK_Chopra [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    “Oh, hey guys. Have you heard about this awesome metal called aluminum? I’m so cool I stan a metal that makes up 8% of the weight of the Earth’s solid surface” - a fucking idiot

    • ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      That’s because the only way to get aluminum, historically, was to find nuggets of it. The process for extracting it from bauxite wasn’t invented until the mid to late 1800s. This is reflected in Dwarf Fortress, as aluminum metal has the same value as platinum and bauxite is a near-worthless construction material.

    • Etterra@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I’m a tungsten alloy man myself. Although it’s not nearly as flexible as some other metals, god damn is it strong.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    5 months ago

    I saw something the other day where a dude talking about a car they were fixing up said they used aluminum for the finish because it looked better than steel and I’m just like “that sounds like how I’ve heard girls prefer eggshell to off-white. They’re the same color!”

    • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Pity it’s been suggested it’s a cumulative neurotoxin that contributes to Alzheimer’s disease. That’s the one thing I don’t like about aluminium.