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Aluminium powder

powdered form of aluminium used as a food colouring and surface colourant

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ12379695
Source-derived summary

Aluminium powder is powdered aluminium.

This was originally produced by mechanical means using a stamp mill to create flakes. Subsequently, a process of spraying molten aluminium to create a powder of droplets was developed by E. J. Hall in the 1920s. The resulting powder might then be processed further in a ball mill to flatten it into flakes for use as a coating or pigment. Aluminium powder features low density with high conductivity.

Usage

autoclave aerated concrete

cosmetic colourant

fingerprint powder

metallic paint

pyrotechnics (including the M-80 firecracker)

refractory

rocket and missile fuel such as the solid rocket boosters of the Space Shuttle and Aluminum-Ice Rocket Propellant (ALICE)

thermite, a pyrotechnic composition of a metal powder and a metal oxide for brief very high temperature uses such as exothermic welding, pyrotechnics and weapons.

Electrically conductive filler material for EMI shielding applications.

Improvised explosive device

Depending on the usage, the powder is either coated or uncoated.

Aluminium granules

Aluminium granules are a larger particle size alternative to aluminium powders. There is no official size range for granules vs.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Aluminium powder” as powdered form of aluminium used as a food colouring and surface colourant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 177-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Aluminium, powder and powdered can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as powdered form of aluminium used as a food colouring and surface colourant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12379695. The Library of Congress control number is sh85004032. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Aluminium powder”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Aluminium powder primary sources, Aluminium powder archive and Aluminium research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Aluminium powder” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.