Magnesium is one of the most amazing metals known to man. It is so light that it is only two-thirds as heavy as aluminum, and you know from your experience with kitchen utensils how light aluminum is! In fact, magnesium is the lightest metal used in industry.

In addition to its lightness, magnesium has another unusual property. It has a tendency to burn. In the form of dust or fine shavings, it catches fire very easily and burns violently.

Otherwise, the properties of magnesium are similar to those of other metals. It has a silvery-white luster, is slightly harder than aluminum, and quickly corrodes or wears away in moist air.

To increase its strength, hardness, and resistance to corrosion, magnesium is usually mixed, or alloyed, with zinc, manganese, and aluminum. The alloys of magnesium have many important uses. They are made into sheets, plates, tubes, rods, and wire. The extreme lightness of magnesium makes it especially useful in airplanes and other fast moving machinery. Sometimes the pure metal, because of its ability to burn, is used in flares, rockets, and tracer bullets.

Magnesium, in the form of its salts, is used in medicine and chemistry. Epsom salt is magnesium sulphate, and milk of magnesia is a suspension of magnesium oxide.

At one time, magnesium was just a curiosity of the chemical laboratory. As far back as 1808, Sir Humphry Davy was able to determine some of its properties, even though he couldn’t obtain pure magnesium. Gradually, scientists began to work with this strange metal and learned how to obtain it in pure form and how to use it with other metals in alloys. It took almost a hundred years for the first magnesium alloy to be produced.

Magnesium is so active chemically that it doesn’t occur in a free state in nature. But in combination with other elements, it actually forms more than two percent of the earth’s crust! Magnesium is obtained by separating it from the minerals with which it is found mixed in nature. These are chiefly magnesite, dolomite, carnallite and natural salt brines.