Used in Aeroplanes. Aluminium's unbeatable strength to weight ratio
1 gives it many uses in the transport industry. Transport is all about moving things around and to do so a force is always required. As force = mass x acceleration (Newton's Second Law of Motion), less force is needed to move a lighter object to a certain acceleration than is needed to get a heavier object to the same acceleration. As aluminium is so
lightweight this means that less energy needs to be used to move a vehicle made with aluminium than one made from a heavier metal, say steel. Although aluminium isn't the strongest of metals its
alloys use other elements to pin dislocations in its
structure to increase its
strength. With trains, boats and cars aluminium is useful for this lightweight property (which gives fuel efficiency) but not essential, in planes however maintaining a relatively low weight is vital (in order to level the ground), and aluminium allows planes to have to this. In modern planes aluminium makes up 80% of their (unladen) weight, and a normal Boeing 747 contains about 75 000 kg of the metal. Its
corrosion resistance is an advantage in transport (as well as packaging) as it makes painting planes unnecessary saving some hundreds of kilograms of further weight.
