Aluminium

Aluminium or aluminum (Symbol Al) (see the spelling section below) is a silvery and ductile member of the poor metal group of chemical elements. Its atomic number is 13. Aluminium is found primarily as the ore bauxite and is remarkable for its resistance to oxidation (due to the phenomenon of passivation), its strength, and its light weight. Aluminium is used in many industries to make millions of different products and is very important to the world economy. Structural components made from aluminium are vital to the aerospace industry and very important in other areas of transportation and building in which light weight, durability, and strength are needed.

Spelling

In the English-speaking world, the spellings (and associated pronunciations) aluminium and aluminum are both in common use in both scientific and nonscientific contexts. In most English-speaking nations, the spelling aluminium predominates, and the spelling aluminum is largely unknown, however in the United States, its former possessions, and Canada, the converse is true: the spelling aluminium is largely unknown, and the spelling aluminum predominates.

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The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) adopted aluminium as the standard international name for the element in 1990, but three years later recognized aluminum as an acceptable variant. Hence their periodic table includes both, but places aluminium first http://www.iupac.org/reports/periodic_table/index.html. IUPAC officially prefers the use of aluminium in its internal publications, although many IUPAC publications use the spelling aluminum(Shows nine examples for "aluminum" although two of those involve stating the "aluminum" spelling is wrong, and This shows six articles for aluminium. However their Goldbook has nothing on aluminum but has has five articles on the ium spelling). An advantage of the "ium" spelling is that the non-English-speaking world prefers the -ium spelling: aluminium is the name used in French and German, and identical or similar forms are used in many other languages. As the non-English speaking world has more people the forms used in languages other than English are one of the reasons IUPAC chose to officially prefer aluminium over aluminum.

Related Topics:
International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry - French - German

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Nomenclature history

In 1808, Humphry Davy originally proposed the name alumium while trying to isolate the new metal electrolytically from the mineral alumina. In 1812 he changed the name to aluminum to match its Latin root. The same year, an anonymous contributor to the Quarterly Review, a British political-literary journal, objected to aluminum, and proposed the name aluminium.

Related Topics:
Humphry Davy - 1812 - Latin - Quarterly Review

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:Aluminium, for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound. (Q. Review VIII. 72, 1812. Cited in OED.)

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This had the advantage of conforming to the -ium suffix precedent set by other newly discovered elements of the period: potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, and strontium (all of which Davy had isolated himself). Nevertheless, -um spellings for elements were not unknown at the time: platinum, which had been known to Europeans since the 16th century, molybdenum, which was discovered in 1778, and tantalum, which was discovered in 1802, all have spellings ending in -um. For the thirty years following its discovery, both the -um and -ium endings were used interchangeably in the scientific literature.

Related Topics:
Potassium - Sodium - Magnesium - Calcium - Strontium - Platinum - Molybdenum - Tantalum

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Curiously, the United States adopted the -ium for most of the 19th century with aluminium appearing in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. However Charles Martin Hall selected the -um spelling in an advertising handbill for his new efficient electrolytic method for the production of aluminium, four years after he had patented the process in 1888. Although this spelling may have been an accident, Hall's domination of production of the metal ensured that the spelling aluminum became the standard in North America, even though the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913 continued to use the -ium version.

Related Topics:
19th century - Webster - 1828 - Charles Martin Hall - 1888 - 1913

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In 1926, the American Chemical Society officially decided to use aluminum in its publications, and American dictionaries typically label the spelling aluminium as a British variant.

Related Topics:
1926 - American Chemical Society

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