Sometimes you come across a purported scientific paper that makes you do a triple-check, just to be sure that you didn’t overlook something, as maybe the claims do make sense after all. Such is the ...

Metals may seem tough, but given enough time even plain old air can be their undoing. Oxygen reacts with it to form metal oxides like rust, but now it turns out a metal oxide may come to the rescue.

Oxidation can drastically change mechanical properties of nanostructures that typically have large surface-to-volume ratios. However, the underlying mechanisms describing the effect oxidation has on ...

In the lab Researchers at TU Wien employed noncontact atomic force microscopy and computational modelling to determine the structure of the aluminium oxide surface. (Courtesy: TU Wien) Determining the ...

Being a metal, aluminium is amenable to mechanical finishing processes commonly used with other metals, and can usually be used with the same equipment without disadvantage, although to exploit the ...

It is not uncommon for a Hackaday writer to trawl the comments section of a given article, looking for insights or to learn something new. Often, those with experience in various fields will share ...

The world produced more than 63 million tonnes of aluminium last year, which went into everything from kitchen foil and cans to aircraft. The metal is lightweight, fully recyclable and surprisingly ...

Aluminium can be obtained from aluminium ore (Al 2 O 3) by a process called electrolysis. Oxygen is also produced by this reaction. The balanced equation for this process is: \(\mathbf{2}Al_{2}O_{3}\, ...