Titanium, named after the giant Titan in Greek mythology, is the strongest metal on Earth. You've probably heard of titanium at some point. It's expensive at the moment, but it's not a rare metal, it's just expensive to mine and produce.
You may know about artificial joints, golf clubs or submarines made of titanium, but did you know there's titanium in white cake icing? Well, let's take a look at some interesting stories about this famously tough metal.
01、This "god-like" metal was not forged until the 20th century
As early as 1791, William Gregg, an amateur English mineralogist and churchman, spotted some strange black sand in a stream near the town of Cornwall. Some of the black sand was magnetic, which Gregg determined was iron oxide, but the rest was a mystery. Of course, it must have been another oxide, but it wasn't in the ROYAL Geological Society textbooks of the time.
The strange oxide was rediscovered in 1795 by German chemist Martin Heinrich Klarouse, who named it titanium oxide after a pre-Olympian deity in Greek mythology. Although pure titanium was discovered in the late 18th century, it wasn't until 1910 that Matthew Hunt, a chemist at General Electric, isolated pure titanium from its oxide. In 1910, In a sealed "bomb," Hunt worked out how to strip the silvery metal from oxide at high temperature and pressure.
02、It is the lightest and strongest metal on earth
Pure titanium has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any metal on earth. It's as strong as steel, but 45 percent lighter.
This unusual strength-to-weight ratio makes titanium and titanium alloys (mixtures of titanium and other metals) the preferred materials for aircraft engines and fuselages, rockets, missiles and even spacecraft. In modern industry, any equipment without metal parts needs to be supplied with as hard and lightweight materials as possible.
For example, the Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger jet, contains 77 tons of titanium in its body. Most of it is in its huge engines. Commercial forging of titanium was in full swing in the 1940s and 1950s, thanks to an innovative metallurgical technique in the 1930s called the Knox Process. It was first used on military aircraft and submarines (mainly by the US and Russia) and then, in the 1960s, on commercial aircraft.
03、Titanium is more resistant to corrosion
Corrosion is an electrochemical process that slowly destroys most metals over time. When metals are exposed to oxygen, either in the air or underwater, the oxygen snatches electrons to produce what we call metal "oxides." One of the most common corrosive oxides is iron oxide, or rust.
But not all oxides corrode the underlying metal. The surface of titanium, for example, is covered with a thin layer of titanium dioxide (TiO2), which actually protects the underlying titanium from any type of corrosion, including electrochemical, microbial, and stress corrosion.
Titanium's natural anticorrosive properties make it ideal not only for aircraft, but also for undersea components exposed to highly corrosive seawater. The ship's propellers are almost always made of titanium, as are the ship's internal ballast and piping systems and the ship's hardware exposed to the sea.
04、Titanium can be implanted anywhere in the body, from head to toe
The thin layer of titanium dioxide, which protects titanium from corrosion, also makes it the safest material to implant. Titanium is completely "biocompatible", meaning it is non-toxic, does not cause allergies or rejection, and can even fuse with human tissue and bone.
Titanium is an excellent surgical material for bone and joint implants, skull plates, dental implant roots, artificial eyes and ear studs, heart valves, spinal fusions and even urethral strictures. Research has shown that titanium implants trigger the body's immune system to grow bone directly on the titanium surface, a process called osseointegration.
Titanium is the material of choice for hip replacement and fracture studs because of its unmatched high strength-to-weight ratio, which makes human implants lighter, and because it has the same elasticity as human bone.
05、Titanium shows off on sports equipment
As the price of pure titanium fell in the late 20th century, manufacturers began to look for more commercial uses for this wonder metal. Titanium's light weight and high strength make it ideal for making sporting goods.
The first titanium golf clubs hit the market in the mid-1990s. Take, for example, callaway's titanium 1 wood cue. These clubs are expensive compared with other 1-woods made of steel or wood, but their success has prompted other sports manufacturers to dabble in titanium.
Titanium can now be found in any type of sports equipment that requires a lot of weight, strength and durability. For example, tennis rackets, lacrosse sticks, skis, bike racks, baseball bats, hiking and mountaineering equipment, camping gear, and even horseshoes for professional horse racing.
White pigments (including cake icing) contain titanium
Of the 6.3 million tons of titanium produced worldwide each year, only 5 percent is forged into metal, and the vast majority is converted to titanium dioxide. The material naturally protects the titanium from corrosion. Today, titanium dioxide is used worldwide as a non-toxic brightening pigment in a wide range of paints, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and foods, including white cake icing.
White paint used to be dyed with pigments containing lead, but once the health effects of lead were known, titanium dioxide succeeded. Turns out, titanium pigments have some cool properties, too. House painters choose titanium-based white paints because of their corrosion resistance and durability.
Titanium oxide is also extremely refracting, giving it a greater natural shine than diamond and producing an especially bright white hue. Titanium oxide also reflects infrared light, which is why titanium coatings have always been used on the outside of solar observatories to disperse infrared light that obscures images.
And an architect named Frank Gehry used titanium to decorate the exterior of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. The entire museum is wrapped in 33,000 titanium panels that change color and brightness under different lighting conditions, giving the museum a stunning glow.
Because titanium oxide at different temperatures, will take on a different metal color. Titanium itself has bacteriostatic effect, is a natural sterilization vessel, so it is also favored by more and more people！
