Aluminium - Enriching A Billion Lives

This is unlike any Lamborghini automobile ever! An SUV from the company who produces supercars made from the blood of raging bulls? Of course, they are calling it the world’s first Super Sports Utility Vehicle – a fact we can’t deny given the super specs on the automobile and Lamborghini’s signature design. Will this animal from Lamborghini’s bullpen deliver on the brand’s promise? Let’s find out! From the outside, the vehicle sports the signature of Lamborghini’s extreme design yet finds a way to make it less aggressive for the owners who just want to buy milk on a cold Monday morning from the nearest market. However, on the inside, it’s still a beast. The front hood houses the 4 litre V8 twin-turbo engine with 650 HP and 850 Nm of torque. Acceleration from 0-100 km/h is achieved in just 3.6 seconds and the top speed is a staggering 305 km/h! Braking is no less impressive: the Urus decelerates from 100 km/h to 0 in 33.7 meters. The vehicle is 4-wheel steering with carbon-c...

Welcome back! Here's the third post on the history of the wonder metal - Aluminium.  Let's move on in our journey and check out the important milestones that shaped our history. Read our first & second post in this series. 1939: The world’s first turbojet-powered aircraft, the German Heinkel He 178, took to air on the 27th of August, 1939. Powered by a centrifugal-flow engine prototyped by Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain, Ernst Heinkel designed the aircraft to achieve flight speeds up to 380 miles per hour. Despite the successful flight demonstration, the Reich Air Ministry (RLM) rejected the aeroplane stating that its combat endurance was only 10 minutes which limited its usability as a military aircraft in a war situation. German Heinkel He 178 1948: The production of Series I, the first model of Land Rover cars, started off in 1948. Designed with an aluminium body and a steel-box chassis, it was originally intended for farming and light industrial us...

We're back with the second post on the history of the wonder metal - Aluminium. Thanks for coming back. Let's roll forward on our journey and check out the important milestones that shaped our history.   Read our first post in this series here . 1886: The electrolytic process of extracting aluminium used today in some smelters was invented by two scientists –   Charles Martin Hall  and Paul Louis-Toussaint Héroult . The former was a French scientist and the later, an American chemist. The duo invented and even patented this process at the same time while working independently. The scientific world gave recognition to both by calling this the Hall-Héroult Process of aluminium extraction. We’d totally watch a movie made on this! The Hall - Héroult duo 1888: Charles Hall and his partners founded a smelter in Kensington, Pennsylvania, which extracted aluminium using the process invented by Hall himself. Initially, the company churned out 22....

Hello everyone! Aluminium is called the 'Metal of the Future' for a reason. From pins to planes, the metal has thousands of applications benefitting humankind. Its lightweight and non-corrosive property make it the material of choice for cutting-edge automobiles, modern buildings, satellites etc. and is eventually substituting iron and steel today.  In this series, we bring to you the journey that our civilisation has travelled using aluminium along the way - a story which must start from the very beginning. Here we go! Did you know that aluminium is the most common metal found in earth’s crust? Almost 8% which, considering the earth’s size, is pretty staggering. However, given the difficulty in extracting aluminium and the subsequent costs associated with it, for decades aluminium was prized above gold. So much so that the first president of 1948 French Second Republic, proudly served his most honoured guests using aluminium plates & cutlery. Whoa! From the...

Doesn’t aluminium already float on water? We can’t blame you if you thought it did because aluminium is indeed a light-weight metal. However, conventional aluminium's density is 2.7gm per cubic cm. In order for something to float on water, this number has to be lesser than 1 (gm per cubic cm). Scientists have designed an ultra-light form of aluminium, paving the way for novel uses of the material in future spacecraft and automobiles. Researchers from Utah State University (USU) have restructured the common household metal at the molecular level to design a form lighter than water! Like most common metals, aluminium lacks natural buoyancy. However, with a little rearranging of the metal’s natural molecular structure, one can produce an ultra-light crystalline form of the metal that is actually less dense than water. Schematic depiction of a supertetrahedral aluminium crystal structure.  The research team constituting USU Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry profes...

If ever there was a name which could be associated with the evolution of a mobile phone, Nokia would outdo the others by a mile! The company pioneered personalisation of the device, making it as resourceful as possible in the most creative way that technology permitted at that time. In the decade that Nokia ruled the mobile phone market, Symbian and Windows were the 2 major software platforms which powered the soul of these devices. And like the fate of any mature proprietary technology, open-source posed an imminent threat to the tech giant – to the extent that it failed to reinvent itself, twice. In 2017, Nokia has made a comeback. The transition is evident – proprietary to open-source, and from plastic/fiber to 6000 series aluminium. Yes, looks matter… and Nokia stands a class apart from the other cheap-looking models which offer similar features. And latest in its arsenal of smartphones is the new brand of the business – the Nokia 8. The Nokia 8 is...

Source: Getty A team of researchers at the US Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground Maryland made a chance discovery when they poured water on a new aluminium alloy they were testing. It began to give off hydrogen immediately! Exciting enough? Well, let us rewind this recent ground-breaking discovery and allow it to sink in slowly as you read on. Hydrogen stands at number one on the periodic table; it is the most abundant element in the Universe. It is found in the sun and most of the stars and the planet Jupiter is composed mostly of hydrogen. On Earth, Hydrogen is prevalent in the form of plenteously available chemical compounds such as hydrocarbons and water. Some see hydrogen gas as the clean fuel of the future – generated from water and returning to water when it is oxidised . Hydrogen-powered fuel cells are increasingly being seen as ‘pollution-free’ sources of energy and are now being used in some buses and cars. Alth...

The Government of Odisha hosted the Asian Athletics Championship, 2017 from 5 th – 9 th July this year. This came as a record ‘90 - Day Challenge’ to the State authorities who had an uphill task of transforming Bhubaneswar to hold such a prestigious international event.  Olly - The Mascot The State geared up for the preparations and took the challenge of organizing the event from end to end which involved renovating the infrastructure and setting up the facilities of the venue - Kalinga Stadium, making the necessary arrangements for the hospitality of more than 1000 athletes and their teams visiting from 45 countries, and carrying out other major activities like branding and promotion of the event. Odisha, a home to sports personalities like Dutee Chand, Sarbani Nanda, Amiya Kumar Mallick and Jauna Murmu has always observed sports as an important area for the holistic development of the state. Young athletes are provided necessary support so that they can cho...