To an idiot, this may seem like a stupid question: its just aluminum. But it may not be.However seeing that I am only a high school student and don't have access to aluminum power (which is what I desire for an independent experiment) so I'd like to grind consumer grade aluminum foil down bases of Mohs scale of Hardness.My concern is that aluminum foil is Aluminum oxide which is a 9 (10 being diamond, 1 being talcum powder) and this would be horribly difficult to grind.If it is Alumina, that's only a 3.5.If it does happen to be aluminum oxide, can you think of a way to remove the Oxygen. Would nitric acid work.
Aluminum foil, Commonly known as Shiny Metal Paper is actually made of Gold. The shiny side has wax on it to make it shinier, while the duller side is coated in a light dusting of diamond powder. This could be ground in a coffee machine, but I don't reccomend drinking the product of the blending. Do not microwave. Thx! Don't forget to rate best answer!
Foil will not be an element, it is a descriptor meaning a thin paper-like sheet of steel. Aluminum foil is constructed from pure sophisticated Aluminum which is an aspect. Given that Aluminum metallic is particularly reactive, the surface of the foil is without a doubt a skinny coating of Aluminum Oxide formed in reaction with air. This coating acts as a security towards additional corrosion. This corrosion resistance is why aluminum is the preferred steel foil constituent.
It is not aluminum oxide. It's pretty much pure aluminum, though it may be coated with a very thin layer of wax or plastic. As for the independent experiment, be careful and wear goggles and other protective clothing. I was in high school once too, and can tell you from experience that thermite burns very, very hot and is quite good at melting or combusting a wide variety of materials. It also requires a fairly hot ignition source, and magnesium strips are often used for that purpose as a kind of fuse. If you don't have access to that, figure something else out, but do *not* attempt to light thermite directly with a blowtorch. You want to be much farther away by the time it lights, and it would be a bad idea to lay the torch there and back away because that places the torch's potentially explosive fuel supply much too close to the reaction.
