Talk:Aluminium

Spelling detail

Might look minor, but Ipreferto Talk this over;

Today, Aluminium#Spelling says :

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) adopted aluminium as the standard international name for the element in 1990. In 1993, they recognized aluminum as an acceptable variant; the most recent 2005 edition of the IUPAC nomenclature of inorganic chemistry acknowledges this spelling as well. IUPAC official publications use the -ium spelling as primary but list both where appropriate.

These improvements I sugggest:

1. Change "they" into "IUPAC"

2. Remove repetition "the most recent 2005 edition of the IUPAC nomenclature of inorganic chemistry acknowledges this spelling as well." Just keep that 2nd ref, all fine. (IMO, it reads like an argumentation not a fact, now).

3. Let's be more specific re this, especially wrt the status of aluminum spelling in IUPAC. I think IUPAC is more clear than our article is. For example, IUPAC writes the alt 'aluminum' in footnotes only.

-DePiep (talk) 00:22, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi. Here's what I think:

1. Doesn't make a big difference to me; maybe indeed your suggestion is better.

2. I'd rather not. The reason why I introduced both was that the 1993 addition was added in an additional document (apparently; I have not been able to find it online. If you can find where this change was first published, that will be greatly appreciated), whereas the 2005 change was that this came from an additional document to the Red Book directly. That's the difference and I'd like to keep it, but I am open to changes of wordings.

3. I genuinely do think that both being added only in a footnote is not that big of a deal. It shows that this spelling is not the primary one or on the same foot as the primary one but I think I reflected that with my choice of words ("acceptable", "acknowledged"---nothing more than that). The word "acknowledged" also marks a contrast with the spelling "sulphur," which IUPAC does not acknowledge, and they have a specific reason for it: ph is only used in words of Greek origin, but "sulfur" is not of Greek origin, and that's why they protest "sulphur." I will eventually write a note about this.

Does this answer your concerns?--R8R (talk) 09:05, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

@R8R: FWIW, if this was the reason, then I really wonder why aluminium got selected. I mean, I usually have loyalty to British spelling, but it is just plain etymologically wrong: the oxide is alumina (cf. lanthana), so the element should be aluminum (cf. lanthanum). Contrast magnesia or ceria. Going by etymological principles, aluminum/sulfur/caesium would have made more sense. So, maybe there is a story here that would be interesting if it could be uncovered. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 02:57, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

References

My understanding has been that sulfur was the most important element from the perspective of chemistry, and it was getting the spelling used in the United States, so the lesser two elements (from the chemical point of view) were getting spellings used in the United Kingdom. You may recall that this balance was also the base for the earlier niobium-tungsten compromise. There really was some talk of how specifically sulphur is wrong; in the cases of aluminium/aluminum and cesium/caesium, nobody AFAIK protested anything, people just agreed that different spellings were used in different countries.

Interestingly, the Royal Society of Chemistry uses spellings aluminium, caesium, and sulfur (i.e., the same ones as the IUPAC), whereas the American Chemical Society uses aluminum, cesium, and sulfur.—R8R (talk) 05:59, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@R8R: I wonder if the same thing was behind the lutetium-hafnium compromise, too?

If part of the argument was that sulphur is wrong etymologically, then the mystery deepens. Because aluminium is just as wrong. ^_^ But I suppose Al and S are just in the third row and taught everywhere, and adhering strictly to the etymological principle means that there's only Cs left for British spelling, and that is one element with an extremely boring chemistry (Cs⁺, pitiful polarising power, need I say more?). So compromise seems the most sensible reason, even if the ACS is doing its own thing (it did the same thing with the superheavies, too). Double sharp (talk) 06:18, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't think the thing with aluminium and sulphur is the same. Surely you know that "ph" comes from the Greek letter phi and from it only. This is why using it in a non-Greek word is telling information about the word that is not correct. On the contrary, aluminium does not tell you anything wrong. That "i" is rather unconventional, but that's about it; one could even argue that it was, in fact, more conventional given how most elements ended on -ium (which was why it emerged in the first place). I recall reading an article in a IUPAC journal about how sulphur was wrong, like actually wrong, and that it should be abandoned. Nothing of the sort has ever been written about aluminium or cesium. One could make a case that sulfur was a sort of international chemical convention; I don't think the same could be said of the other two IUPAC choices, aluminium and caesium. Spellings are apparently less likely to be agreed on, so it makes some sense that the ACS eventually agreed on "dubnium" but not aluminium or caesium; it seems that people don't accept external arbitrary rulings on such delicate matters (or maybe the problem is in the arbitrariness: nobody really asked for a solution anyway). That is why aluminium and caesium is not a universal compromise everyone accepts (which is why I find WP:ALUM silly).--R8R (talk) 07:36, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

P.S. I am unaware if there was a specific lutetium-hafnium compromise. I recall reading that the identification of celtium was erroneous. Anyway, the 1949 arbitration was predominantly focused on choosing the more widely used name, and apparently only elements 41 and 74 were problematic enough to require some more scheming to get to a settlement.--R8R (talk) 07:53, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@R8R: There are a few exceptions to the rule that "ph" only comes from phi (gopher, nephew spring to mind), but I concede the point in general. ^_^ Etymologically "cesium" is sort of wrong, but then again the pronunciations of ae and e merged in Latin when it was still being spoken, and simplifying "ae" and "oe" in such words is a general feature of American English spelling that would probably look really weird if it was changed just for one word. As for Lu and Hf; I had some sources on this, which I will look for when I have time. ;) Double sharp (talk) 10:22, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@Double sharp: here's an article from Nature Chemistry that argues against sulphur while advocating the possibility of aluminum and cesium (Nature, as you will recall, is a British journal).--R8R (talk) 15:31, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Toxicity of aluminium

The article says: "... because it is non-toxic", without citations. However, research does not indicate aluminium is non toxic.

One such example, an article which says aluminium can be possibly rigid, and that high levels of dietary aluminum could is linked to Alzheimer's disease is found at:

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/aluminum-foil-cooking#section1 Polytope4D (talk) 01:41, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Baking powder commonly contains sodium aluminum sulfate (spelling in the baking powder article), a soluble form of it. Metal aluminum is protected by a very stable oxide, so difficult to get out. If there really was a question about soluble aluminum, it would be out of baking powder. Gah4 (talk) 04:30, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Even more, the above article says that it is safe in the normal concentrations, and is normally excreted. Gah4 (talk) 04:34, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Aluminium is quite safe for usage in everyday items, but aluminium items for food preparation are hazardous, because aluminium is reacting in acidic environment, by creating aluminium salts, which in turn modifies enzymes by removing iron, making enzyme non-operational, thus aluminium is toxic for usage in food preparation.

Aluminium foil has protective oxidized layer which makes it safe to use in food preparation, but layer can be destroyed(and allows for aluminium to leak and react with food) if it is used to prepare food with high acidity, like vinegar, wine, lemon and high alkalinity, like baking soda.

Aluminium sulphate is not aluminium and has complettelly different chemical properties.92.8.137.36 (talk) 15:42, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Properties of Aluminum

Would it be better to list ranges for the mechanical properties of aluminium (and other elements for that matter) in the infobox as a range rather than specific values? Exact values imply that those values are agreed upon in the scientific community when in reality ranges are often reported, even from a single source. Additionally, what are people's thoughts on adding a separate mechanical properties table with additional properties listed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bob Clemintime (talk • contribs) 21:30, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Double sharp's pre-GAN comments

One section at a time. ^_^

Since Double sharp is gone, I'll be the one to strike these comments.--R8R (talk) 13:40, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Physical characteristics

• Re note [c]: I guess density is what mostly is cared about rather than atomic weight. Iron has pretty low atomic weight for a metal, most metals are heavier, but it's not thought of as light, is it?

  True, but the whole point of mentioning it is to reference this fact later when it comes to discussion of bulk properties, including density.--R8R (talk) 13:40, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

• Any idea why Al has a different structure from the rest of its group? (It does not match scandium and yttrium either.)

  It looks unlikely there is a good result. Either there is nothing, or it's too complicated for this article. G&E also says nothing about this.--R8R (talk) 13:40, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

• The idea that few electrons are available for metallic bonding explains the low melting point does not really convince me that much. Scandium also has three electrons available for metallic bonding, yet it melts at 1814 K, aluminium only at 934 K.

  According to G&E (p. 947), "it appears" that this is because a d electron is different from a p electron. I guess this article is not the place for this.--R8R (talk) 13:40, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

• I think some citation are needed for the "bulk" section
• Do we need the detailed info given under "crystal structure"?

  Nope; removed it.--R8R (talk) 13:40, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Double sharp (talk) 11:42, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

• Some asteroids: come on, give us an example. Like 4 Vesta. ^_^

Chemistry

Since I wrote this section I feel free to criticise myself. XD

• Something useful from Droog Andrey from the 2018 megathread: aluminium is not really that electropositive, just take a look at its electronegativity value. In NiAl compounds it actually takes the negative charge. The hardness and oxygen affinity is simply a result of the small core increasing class-A-ness (same as for beryllium). A cite is needed, but actually it would be good to explain oxygen affinity as it is referred to later under "Natural occurrence".
• Going on from there: the situation of having high oxygen affinity, electropositivity, and highly negative standard electrode potential is not just about having the noble gas core. Y, Zr, and Nb have that kind of behaviour, and they have the noble gas core. But: Lu, Hf, and Ta have the same behaviour even though they don't have the noble gas core. Probably so do Lr, Rf, and Db. However: having the noble gas core is not enough for Si and P to be electropositive. I suspect this is more the class-A class-B distinction as mentioned above, and we need a better cite to explain where this comes from properly.
• Intermetallics – if we go into this detail about compounds with nonmetals, I want to know more. Metals from what groups? There are some interesting ones like purple gold after all, they deserve a little mention.
• We show the graph of hydrolysis, which is good, but shouldn't we talk about it a bit more in the text? (This actually ties in to the harmful environmental effects of acid rain – when water is acidified, cationic Al³⁺ becomes bioavailable, and the fish suffer because the hydrolysis products precipitate inside them, IIRC.) Also, is there some kind of picture around of the visible results of the hydrolysis stages?
• Saying amphoterism is characteristic of weakly basic cations is kind of begging the question! XD Amphoterism is not a new thing in itself, it is just the combination of basic and acidic properties of an oxide or hydroxide. This can be skewed to one side (e.g. lutetium) or the other side (e.g. arsenic). Rather the better generalisation (which you can find in Wulfsberg or just by applying Fajans' rules) is that it's characteristic of smaller and more highly charged cations of intrinsically not that electropositive elements. For aluminium, coordination number is low, basic character is weakened as more electrostatic force pulls on each water molecule. Scandium is higher coordination number and you can see it is a bit less acidic, yttrium and lutetium are even higher, lanthanum is surely basic. Same idea.
• Relationship to scandium should be mentioned a bit more I think. It can be useful sometimes.
• Descriptive chemistry is OK. But do we really need a whole section about unusual oxidation states? I think we just need a note about the volatility thing for trihalides.
• Should we maybe say what LiAlH₄ is used for? Unfortunately that may duplicate "Applications, Compounds".

Natural occurrence

• And where did ²⁶Al come from?

Double sharp (talk) 09:55, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Say more about corrosion of aluminum

Aluminum metal is frequently subject to corrosion. The reason for this is typically use of the incorrect alloy, or other errors in design. The article has a brief mention in its Chemistry section; but the topic is important enough to receive a subsection heading, or link to an article that presently doesn't exist. Oaklandguy (talk) 21:38, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

This is something that I have actually been curious about: the passivation. In a certain sense: the activity of some metals, especially near the left end of the table, looks less than it really is due to formation of oxide layer. We only really notice the ones that burn or tarnish immediately (groups 1 and 2): actually metals in groups 3, 4, and 5 are also very reactive with oxygen, but they form the oxide layer and you don't notice. The difference seems to be about whether it actually protects the metal or not (compare, say, lanthanum with lutetium). So indeed something ought to be said, but I don't know enough to say what it is yet. XD Double sharp (talk) 10:01, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Re recent edits

This is the original edit.

@Nohat: I was going to say that it is best to use the WP:BRD cycle---that is, when undone, discuss that rather not undo back immediately---but I have checked your userpage and it says you're an admin, so I find myself struggling to understand what's happening here. You say my edits were an "unexplained reversion", whereas the opposite is true: I did provide summaries in both of my edits. Presumably neither was clear enough, however, so I'll be happy to clarify both of my edits.

please mind the sequence of derivations and keep it uniform: The word "aluminium" comes from "alumina." The word "alumina" comes from alum. The word "alum" comes from alumen. The word alumen comes from *alu-. These are four sentences, each saying something in the form of "A comes from B." Similar facts, similar structure of sentences. Clear enough. It is hardly beneficial to break that similarity between facts by different structure. If anything, I'd love to hear from you on this.

what about stibium?: precisely what the summary says. The point raised in the added sentence is that ancient names like ferrum and aurum end on -um. Okay. What about stibium, the Latin name for antimony? That runs contrary to the illusion a reader gets from the text that all ancient names ended on -um but not -ium. Also, oxide names don't end on -ite; that suffix is reserved for minerals.--R8R (talk) 16:01, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

For the etymological chain, I'm not sure I understand your point. I didn't change the structure of the derivations. I removed the irrelevant bit explicitly stating "aluminium oxide in modern nomenclature". If that bit is to be restored, it should at least punctuate "aluminium oxide" in quotes or italics. I left this fact implicit with the wiki link to aluminium oxide. I added links for both alumina and alum. I'm not really sure what the objection is here—is it that the first two derivations are conjoined into a single sentence and the other two are in separate sentences? It is my opinion that the most important things to know about the etymology of aluminum is it is named for the oxide, and the oxide is named for the mineral, which connects the history of the coinage of the name of the metal with the history of the discovery of the metal. The details about the meaning of the Latin root of the mineral's name and the PIE root just seem a lot more arcane to me, so it seemed sensible to structure how they are presented differently. If you're just skimming, you can get all the most important parts of the etymology in the first sentence, and the remaining sentences cover more of the linguistic esoterica.

Yes, my concern is that two sentences were merged into one. That's the thing that worries me, not specific wordings. The way the text was written originally was a bit easier to read, and that's what concerns me the most. I agree that the part on PIE is rather exotic to many readers but that merge does not improve the ease of reading. If you don't know in advance that you only need to read one sentence, then it's hard to follow that long sentence was a way of stressing the importance of those two steps in the sequence.

But while we're at it, I also do think that calling alumina an oxide is rather misleading. Technically speaking, yes, there are other oxides of aluminium, and to specify that we're talking about specifically alumina, you could name it "aluminium(III) oxide", but this one is the best-known one by far, so it is perfectly fine to refer to it as to "aluminium oxide" without any further qualifications. Also, aluminium was not named after alumina because it occurs in nature; it is because it was the earth that was obtained from alum, and alum is the thing that occurs naturally.

With my arguments in mind, could we settle on this:

Aluminium is named after alumina, or "aluminium oxide" in modern nomenclature. The word "alumina" comes from "alum", the mineral from which it was collected.

I didn't link alumina and alum originally because both are linked earlier in the article, but some link duplication is allowed, so I won't insist on removing the newly added links.--R8R (talk) 08:53, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

I honestly don't really have that strong of feeling about retaining my adjusted wording. I changed it in a way that seemed easier to read to me, but based on your comment "The way the text was written originally was a bit easier to read", I guess my instinct for readability is not as well-tuned as I thought. I personally find highly repetitive syntactic structures harder to read because if you need to re-read to understand, so many duplicate words and phrases give your eye less to grab onto as you scan. Regardless of which wording we end up with, I would prefer to retain the intention of implying that the first two parts of the etymology are both more important and of greater general interest than the other two, so I would be reluctant to return to the wording that presents all four parts of the etymology as though they are equivalent in significance. If you really think that separating them into separate sentences improves the readability, I won't object.

As for "an oxide" vs. "aluminium oxide" vs. "aluminium(III) oxide", I'm not sure what is misleading about calling alumina an oxide. A misleading wording would tend to make readers come to a false conclusion, but I'm not sure I see what false belief that a reader who sees an oxide might come to. You grant that there are multiple oxides of aluminum and that alumina is only one of them, so wouldn't the actually misleading wording be to just call it "aluminium oxide" without further clarification? I chose that wording specifically because a reader who is unfamiliar with the name alumina but already knows aluminum has multiple oxides might incorrectly conclude that "alumina" refers to all of them.

I'm not enamored with the wording "aluminium oxide" in modern nomenclature because it seems misplaced. The etymology is a sequence of facts that move backward in time, starting with the coining of aluminium. It's structurally anachronistic to present a parenthetical fact ("the name alumina has been replaced with aluminium oxide) which occurred chronologically after aluminium was coined into the middle of that sequence. Nohat (talk) 00:01, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Re "an oxide" vs. "aluminium oxide" vs. "aluminium(III) oxide": you're technically correct, what I mean is that I don't want to give an impression that there are other oxides which are comparable in terms of abundance or anything, really. There is no need to use the phrase aluminium oxide as the name. I could also see a phrase like "the most common oxide of aluminium": I think this phrase is fine with you?--R8R (talk) 13:52, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

As for "stibium", the Antimony page I think is pretty clear that the Latin name stibium comes from adding the -um suffix to the Greek stibi. The i comes from the root, not part of the suffix. That's actually the whole general point of the first half of the paragraph—the -ium suffix for metals with Latinate names can be analyzed as a folk etymology rebracketing of what was historically a -um suffix appended to roots ending in -i becoming understood as a novel -ium suffix. Similar folk etymologies have occurred in e.g. the spelling "virii" as a plural of virus, based presumably on mistaking forms like radii and brachii as having a -ii plural-marking suffix.

Point taken. That paragraph right now looks rather clumsy, particularly because of the seemingly unnecessarily long list of names of elements. I'll see if it can be helped with your observation in mind.--R8R (talk) 08:53, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

I completely agree that the paragraph is clumsy. It was clumsy before, and while my change introduced the OED citation for the -um suffix being used for metals in Latin, it's still a clunker. It presents a grab-bag of facts about the spellings of other elements in both English and Latin in an attempt to lay out the arguments for both the -um and -ium spellings using historical precedent. I think there are relevant facts on both sides of that argument—both the -um and -ium spellings have compelling historical precedents, and an improved version of that paragraph would signpost those arguments more explicitly.

I think the January 1811 citation from the Critical Review (which I recently discovered in the updated OED entry for aluminium) changes a lot about the story here. It means that the -ium spelling is in fact older than the -um spelling as far we know, as we don't have a citation for aluminum earlier than Davy's 1812 Elements of Chemical Philosophy. It's too bad we don't have an author for that Critical Review piece, as it was quite satisfying when I was able to unearth Thomas Young as the author of the Quarterly Review piece that argued for aluminium based on its "more classical sound" (whatever that means). The OED actually has an extended discussion about the 1811 citation which might be relevant to restructuring the section:

Quot. 1811 at sense A. 1 is a review of a lecture by H. Davy delivered in 1809 and published in 1810 ( Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.)  100 16–74). The published paper, on which the review appears to be based, does not name the new substance created by the experiments described; the ingredient alumina is referred to in the form alumine (see alumine n.).

I do wonder if Davy used a name during the lecture itself even if the published paper did not. We shall probably never know! In any case, I also think it would be worthwhile to at least consider how to give priority in telling the story of the origin of the name. The evidence we have now does show aluminium as older than aluminum but we don't quite know who proposed that name nor we know why Davy chose aluminum over aluminium in Elements of Chemical Philosophy the following year. I'm also not sure I quite understand what Young meant by aluminum having a "less classical sound" than aluminium. It sounds to me like a post-hoc rationalization of a purely personal preference, and frankly at odds with the actual historicity of -ium as a Classical Latin suffix for metal names. I do think it's fun when the OED's earliest citations are metalinguistic discussions of the words themselves, but I do think the elegant way which he phrased it ("for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound") makes it seem like a more compelling argument than it is, so I excised the full quotation from the text and kept only the phrase "less classical sound" with a little more circumspection that it was just one guy's opinion.

One other thing about this section that I wanted to bring up is the bit about alumium being "criticized by contemporary chemists from France, Germany, and Sweden, who insisted the metal should be named for the oxide". The relevant section from Richards 1896 reads as follows:

Davy next mixed alumina with potassium and iron filings, hoping that the iron would collect any metal reduced from the alumina. On melting this mixture a button resulted which was white and harder than iron, and was undoubtedly an alloy of iron and aluminium, but Davy could not separate the two metals. In concluding the recital of his experiments he said, "Had I been fortunate enough to isolate the metal after which I sought, I would have given it the name alumium.

In making this suggestion it is perfectly plain that Davy intended this word to represent the metal from alum, simply starting with alum, and adding ium as the proper termination. Objections were very soon thereafter made to this proposed name, not to the termination ium, which was considered absolutely proper, but to the root or stem of the word. It was maintained by French, German and Swedish writers that the name of the new metal should be derived from its oxide, and that the stem of the word should therefore be alumin, and thence the name aluminium. Davy was influenced by these criticisms to the extent of changing in 1812 to alumin-um, but no writers, except a very few English and, in recent years, some Americans, have used this spelling.

The book overall seems pretty credible, and there are plenty of citations in it. There aren't any for this passage, though, and so we don't know exactly who these French, German, and Swedish writers who objected are, or what their objections were, other than what Richards asserts. The way the article now reads implies these criticisms are well-established facts, but I would not be so certain if that passage is the only evidence we have of them, especially since the book was written nearly 100 years after the events it reports on (and over 120 years before now). Richards' knowledge of this would have to be based either on written records, which he doesn't cite, or oral history, which is not exactly known for being reliable.

I think it is probable that the claims are factual, but I don't think the evidence we have is sufficient for the boldness of the assertion in our text.

Finally, I also want to mention an issue with the claim that the -ium spelling is "the standard in most other languages". The citation is for Powell 2015; however I don't have a copy to reference, so I don't know exactly what he says. But, our article here has 176 interlanguage links to the other language Wikipedias, and only 24 of them use the spelling aluminium (including "Simple English" and two different varieties of Norwegian). I think you'd be hard pressed to convince anyone that 13.6% counts as "most". Maybe it is meant to weight by number of speakers, but of the top 30 languages, only English, French, and German use the spelling aluminium. Maybe what is meant is that most other languages use a name for the element that includes a high front vowel or palatalization at the end of the root, but that claim seems to me so nuanced and marginal as to be essentially pointless to include. I would advocate either eliminating the claim, or tempering it somehow.

Nohat (talk) 00:01, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

To be fair, I don't think the 1811 citation changes much. I mean, it's relevant, and it should definitely be mentioned, it's just that it doesn't look like Davy thought much of those spellings one way or another. He didn't even insist the name should be that, merely that it "might be called" that. You see, Oersted didn't even bother to claim the discovery because he didn't think of it much, so I can easily see Davy not worry too much about spellings.

I'll see what I could find to help your concern re Richards. Not right now maybe, but eventually, when I am preparing for GAN.

I agree with your call for tempering the claim. I have changed the phrase a bit, and I will revisit this question further during my preparation for GAN.--R8R (talk) 13:52, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

I take the point about minerals with -ite but the general point is that these element names are derived by morphological process applied to the names of the materials from which the elements were first isolated. I would definitely agree there is opportunity for improvements to the wording there.

Nohat (talk) 23:05, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

New information

I notice that these pieces of information is not in the article. So I have written them down so you can add it to the article Although its electrical conductivity is only about 60% that of copper, it is used in electrical transmission lines because of its light weight. It can be deposited on the surface of glass to make mirrors, where a thin layer of aluminium oxide quickly forms and acts as a protective coating. Aluminium oxide is also used to make synthetic rubies and sapphires for lasers. Aluminium can now be produced from clay, but the process is not economically feasible at present. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wild kratts ch (talk • contribs) 14:08, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

New information

I notice that these pieces of information is not in the article. So I have written them down so you can add it to the article Although its electrical conductivity is only about 60% that of copper, it is used in electrical transmission lines because of its light weight. It can be deposited on the surface of glass to make mirrors, where a thin layer of aluminium oxide quickly forms and acts as a protective coating. Aluminium oxide is also used to make synthetic rubies and sapphires for lasers. Aluminium can now be produced from clay, but the process is not economically feasible at present. Wild kratts ch (talk) 14:17, 19 August 2020 (UTC)<ref>"aluminium". pubchem.<ref>