(This has some grounds in reallity, so this very well is a post for brain storming). By not violating, i mean no creeping on others in their privatee places. Consider your selves owners of a factory which produces metallic objects which are transparent (properties similar to aluminium) what could be a product which could get you huge profits.
I would also like you to ignore the easiest option to make displays (for phones, laptops etc) which are much more tensile and durable.
Transparent metallic containers would be a revolution - cooking pots, gas cylinders, even electronics. We could even have transparent wires (transparent insulation is already a thing).
OP is probably asking, because transparent aluminum already exists, yet isn’t used widely
The name is misleading because transparent aluminium is actually a ceramic, not a metal, so its properties are nothing like you’d expect from a metal - it has low thermal and electrical conductivities, it’s more likely to fracture than to bend, etc.
I was thinking the same thing; there’s not enough information in the post to answer. Not all metals are ferrous; many don’t conduct electricity or are not magnetic. Non-ferrous metals are useless for making cookware to be used with (increasingly popular) induction stoves, so “clear pans” might not be the best idea.
Metals also have different thermal conductivity. Aluminum’s is great, but the uses for pure aluminum cookware is limited; when it is used, it’s usually clad in much more durable stainless steel, and the visual characteristics consequently utterly irrelevant.
Is this unnamed clear metal ferrous? Does it have good thermal conductivity? What’s its density - is it heavy? You’re not going to be using it in airplane windows if it’s heavier than glass. What’s its hardness? How brittle is it? Not going to be in vehicle windshields if it’s brittle, or scratches easily.
As you imply, there are a lot of characteristics that affect the usefulness of a material in any given application. It’s why materials science is so important to product design.
Yup - thankfully OP did provide some metal as reference, aluminium. From that we can guess it’s non-ferrous, light, good thermal and electrical conductivity.
I wasn’t aware that non-ferrous metals couldn’t be used with induction stoves (I use gas). But I guess you could still get transparent sides, and a steel bottom? (…I really want to see my food cooking!)
Yeah. Induction stoves work by invoking magnetic current in the metal that’s resting on the plates. For that to happen, the material needs to be ferrous. Pure copper won’t work, and alloys are less effective.
It’s a minor inconvenience. You can’t use glass tea kettles or copper (as I said), for instance, but most stovetop cookware of already ferrous: cast iron skillets and stainless steel, mostly. Most modern cookware with copper or aluminum is steel clad with the other material as a core, because steel is vastly more corrosion resistant. That works fine, the steel gets hot and transfers heat to the core and it’s business as usual. Almost nobody buys pure copper cookware anymore, and nobody in their right mind would buy pure aluminum cookware. The real issue is that tempered glass is still moderately popular for some uses, and that’s useless on inductive stoves.
