My friends ,friends,friends father gave him a piece of metal before he passed . It is square, about the size of a credit card, and extreemly thin. It looks like aluminum but is lighter than a business card of the same size? It is very strong and very hard to bend and about the thickness of a credit card. He said his dad worked on jets*parts and stuff? what do you think this metal is????Aluminum????
Pure aluminium only has a yield strength of around 10 MPa but aluminium-titanium alloys can have strength up to around 600MPa. BTW titanium is about 2 times heavier than aluminium which is 2.7grams/cm^3
True aircraft grade aluminum is individually graded based on not composition but on an inspection to make sure there are no irregularities that would cause an unexpected early failure.
I think pure aluminum will have more weight than a credit card for same size. It can be aluminum which alloyed by some lighter impurities metals. Total density of the alloy has lighter weihgt than plastic but has more strength.
Weigh the card. A density of .10 lbs/cu.in would be aluminum, .28 lbs/cu.in. would be carbon steel and .30 would be stainless steel. The gold color is probably a titanium-nitrite coating which provides a wear resistant surface. It could of course be an entirely different alloy that density alone would not identify, but this should get you in the proper ballpark, so to speak.
A business card is about 0.23 mm thick and has a density of about 1g/cc A credit card is about 0.8 mm thick and has a density of about 1.4 g/cc Lithium has a density of 0.53 g/cc, but it is not a strong metal. It oxidizes easily and is not used as a pure metal. Magnesium has a density of 1.738 g/cc, but pure magnesium is similar to aluminum in strength. Beryllium has a density of 1.848 g/cc and is quite strong. Pure beryllium is rather brittle. A person might be able to break piece about the thickness of a credit card. Aluminum has a density of 2.702 g/cc. Titanium has a density of 4.5 g/cc. It is much stronger than aluminum. A piece that is much thinner than a piece of aluminum might be just as strong. Many pure metals can be made much stronger by adding a small percentage of some other metal to make an alloy, but most such alloys are a little more dense than the pure metal. An aluminum-lithium alloy may be 10% less dense than aluminum and stronger than pure aluminum, but not a great deal stronger than the usual aluminum-copper alloys. Beryllium seems to be the material that comes closest to your description.
