Aluminum

Aluminium offers a rare combination of valuable properties. It is one of the lightest metals in the world: it’s almost three times lighter than iron but it’s also very strong, extremely flexible and corrosion resistant because its surface is always covered in an extremely thin and yet very strong layer of oxide film. It doesn’t magnetise, it’s a great electricity conductor and forms alloys with practically all other metals.
Light, durable and functional: these are the qualities that make aluminium one of the key engineering materials of our time. We can find aluminium in the homes we live in, in the automobiles we drive, in the trains and aeroplanes that take us across long distances, in themobile phones and computers we use on a daily basis, in the shelves inside our fridges and in modern interior designs, but a mere 200 years ago very little was known about this metal.