Magnesium Alloy Laptops?

since all the powerbooks are made about of aluminum or titanium allows...

don't know if I'd put too much stock into this.

[edit: I was corrected below]

arn

I believe the ibook has a magnesium substructure. Can't remember where I heard this (Apple website discussing strength and durability of ibook? or at xlr8yourmac when I was reading up on how to replace my hd?), but I'm pretty sure that this is what they're referring to. It's probably also used in the pb's and the titanium and alu. are for the shells only.

Edit:
Heh. From the Apple website in the sidebar for the iBook.

Space-age materials
The iBook was designed with durability in mind. That’s why it’s made of ultratough polycarbonate plastic — the same material used in bulletproof glass — and has an internal magnesium frame for added strength.

The iBook indeed does have a Magnesium structure


Edit: i guess he editted his post which was posted before mine lol

ah - cool. thanks for the info. ;)

arn

I'm probably wrong but if I recall my chemistry classes in high school I believe that Magnesium is highly combustible...

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Magnesium in its pure form is combustible, but not the alloys. The unique attribute that this has is that it can be die cast just like plastic, but doesn't have the recycling issues and greater strength while still being lightweight.

There has been a greater push in using Mg Alloys in almost every industry - cars, cameras, electronics, etc.

But a quick search on the web failed to find out what the alloy is composed of aside from magnesium. Any chemists out there know?

D

Magnesium, alluminium, titanium .. they're all ok, but I think that the future is in Duretanium.
It's extremely lightweight, stiff, firm, even laser beam hardly can scratch it, and it is used in construction of Star Trek's spaceships too :-)
The only thing we're missing in such a laptop is good power supply, hopefuly made by matter and antimatter fusion, controlled by crystals of dillithium (which is a good inhibitor of nuclear reactions). Such a Powerbook could run for years without recharging (which means, adding new antimatter containers).
:D

Ok, I found out more about the Magnesium alloys - looks like there could be 100s or scores of 100s of ASTM certified alloys.

http://www.key-to-metals.com/Article78.htm

There seem to be a few elements that can be used in the alloys - aluminum, rare earth, thorium, zirconium, manganese, silver, silicon, tin and zinc. And I'd wager the combinations along with percentages are almost infinite.

Cool stuff!

D

Originally posted by Mr. Anderson
Magnesium in its pure form is combustible, but not the alloys. The unique attribute that this has is that it can be die cast just like plastic, but doesn't have the recycling issues and greater strength while still being lightweight.

There has been a greater push in using Mg Alloys in almost every industry - cars, cameras, electronics, etc.

But a quick search on the web failed to find out what the alloy is composed of aside from magnesium. Any chemists out there know?

D

Well, I'm not a chemist, and ...no, I don't know. :D ;)

But, I'll keep my eye out on this thread, 'cuz these are the things I like to know...little tidbits of useless knowledge.

Some of you may remember from the early days of the IBM PC that there was a magnesium alloy encased laptop computer--the Grid PC. If I remember correctly, it also had a lightweight plasma display.

Another use for magnesium used to be car wheels. The magnesium was used in pure form to create mag wheels. After some terrible accidents, they added a couple of other metals to keep them safe from combustion and they became alloys. It seems to me that sodium and alumi were used to stabilise things.