Comment on MIT just made aluminum 5x stronger with 3D printing

• lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  ALON is a fully covalent ceramic*, not metallic aluminium. They’re as different from each other as table salt and metallic sodium are.

  *formula (AlN)·(Al₂O₃)ₓ, where 1.7<x<2.3

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  • Buelldozer@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    ALON is aluminum oxynitride. It’s aluminum. If you don’t like that then you are not going to like Saphire, Al2O3, as an answer either.

    BTW I’m old enough that I watched that movie in the Theater and I’m pretty sure sure that Scotty doesn’t refer to “metallic aluminum”, he simply says “transparent aluminum” and we have two different materials that fit the description.

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    • lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      That’s as weird, inaccurate, silly and misleading as saying “ALON is oxygen”. Or that table salt is a chemical weapon (bertholite). We (people in general) shouldn’t be saying a compound “is” one of its constituent elements.

      BTW I’m old enough that I watched that movie

      Just like I didn’t pick the media reference up, I expect at least some other people to not to, either. People will however gather stuff from the context: OP talking about a metallic alloy, sorghum’s “it” gets interpreted as “now make that metallic alloy transparent”, and then yours as talking about alloys, at most a metal.

      I know I’m being an arse hat with this. I’m doing it because it’s a big deal: if you say “ALON is transparent aluminium”, people expect at least some properties to be similar to a soft metal good at conducting electricity. Except now transparent, because Chemistry is wizardry /s.

      The title in the OP is also slightly misleading, but that’s journalism. We should do better.

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