Back to category: Science

Limited version - please login or register to view the entire paper.

Chemistry - Aluminium

Once upon a time, in a far away land of Britain in 1807, a soft silvery-white solid’s existence was first established by Sir Humphrey Davy. Davy was born in Penzance and was an apprenticed surgeon. He named his discovery alumium. Of course, this name was re-spelt by later scientists. However, although Davy underlined the existence and named aluminium, he did not succeed in actually producing any. Davy made numerous attempts to isolate aluminium by electrolyzing a fused mixture of aluminium oxide and potash, but was clearly unsuccessful.

It took many years of painstaking research to unleash the metal from its evil ore bauxite, a very common hard clay-like material containing 40% of aluminium oxide. It was only in 1825, when a minute lump of Aluminium was produced by Hans Christian Oersted, a Danish chemist.

His work was further developed by Friederick Wohler of Germany in 1845, who successfully produced pin head sized aluminium.However, aluminium was considered expensi...

Posted by: Novelett Roberts

Limited version - please login or register to view the entire paper.