Comment on Someone had to mine all the metal for the coins that end up in jars
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
The amazing thing is, there are so many ways the metals could have ended up in the coins. For example, iron is pretty simple, you just heat up the rocks and molten iron begins to leak out. Aluminium is really weird, because finding it in a metallic form is very rare. However, there are aluminium containing minerals pretty much everywhere. Turns out, you can dissolve those rocks with some chemicals, and separate the aluminium from all the other junk with electricity.
remotelove@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Alumina (aluminum oxide) is what you are extracting from aluminum ore and tough as fuck, which is why it’s easier to dissolve the rest of the stuff around it first.
Oxygen is mainly that other “junk” you have to separate with electricity. While the smelters only run at 4.5 volts (per cell), they have to push about 300kA to get the stuff up to ~950°C which breaks its chemical bond.
You probably have never even touched pure aluminum before. Aluminum and oxygen react so quick, all we typically ever see and touch is a alumina shell.