Hello Explorer, welcome to the smartest show in the history of the universe.

It's a brand new science quest.

Today, it's all about amazing aluminum.

You join me inside a busy aluminium foundry.

There's big machines, clanking and thumping, sparks are flying.

We're on a science adventure to follow aluminium, a very special metal

from where it begins to the everyday objects made of it that you use,

and later you'll have the chance to become a

recycling detective and get hands on with this marvellous metal first yeah that's better

we'll be back in the foundry in a bit to find out more shall we start with some basics right

aluminium you see it everywhere aluminium Aluminium foil and cans,

also in cars, buildings, even planes. But what makes it so special? Well, aluminium is a metal. It's

one of the most useful ever discovered. It's lighter than loads of other metals. It's very

strong. It's malleable, which means it can be

easily shaped into cans or for building planes, cars, bikes, even window frames. It's amazing because

you get so much strength without loads of weight. And did you know, here's an amazing fact.

It's also the third most abundant element in the Earth's crust, after oxygen and silicon,

so there's loads of it. But just because there is a lot of the raw material around the planet,

it doesn't mean we should take it for granted. We'll be finding out more about that later.

Now, to help give us some of the background to aluminium, I met up with Amy, who's one of the experts at

the aluminium packaging recycling organisation, or Allupro for short. Hi Dan. Aluminium can be

recycled over and over again because it's what we call a permanent material. That means that no

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