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Why does aluminum foil have one shiny side and one with a matte finish?

so if you skipped the final rolling it would be shiny on both sides?

is this being produced?

a minute agobotusaurus

> Yet many people persist in calling aluminum foil "tinfoil."

> We chemists get annoyed at things like that.

> Now, about aluminum foil.

Actually, most chemists are profoundly annoyed at the Americans' inability to spell aluminium properly...

4 days agoCLPadvocate

Sir Humphry Davy first isolated the stuff and he called it aluminum, so that's good enough for me.

14 minutes agodpe82

IUPAC recognizes both spellings.

Also, speak up, we can't hear you from all the way up here ON THE MOON.

an hour agoCamperBob2

It's cold and lonely here on the moon. -- Jonathan Coulton

38 minutes agofoobarbecue

Did visiting the moon damage your hearing? Last I checked there haven’t been any Americans on the moon for over half a century.

Perhaps if you used the metric system…

34 minutes agoantonvs

They do use the metric system at NASA maybe that’s why they haven’t been back to the moon.

15 minutes agohacker_homie

Yes but their US contractors don’t all use metric, which is what caused them to miss Mars that one time.

13 minutes agoantonvs

If I recall correctly they didn't miss Mars. Quite the opposite, really.

9 minutes agor2_pilot

I always heard the shiny side reflected heat better. So that side should face food you are trying to heat up in the oven.

Any truth to that I wonder?

4 days agojohng

No. Aluminum foil has the same material properties with respect to convection and conduction of heat no matter which side faces out. The only heat that would be different would be radiated heat, which your food won't have a ton of, and even then, the dull side is still quite reflective. It's maybe one of those "technically" correct statements that the shiny side reflects more heat, but for the application of cooking, the impact is effectively zero. The retention of steam is going to be such a larger factor the side you use will effectively make no difference.

37 minutes agoahhhhnoooo

I can speak for myself: when I ask if the shiny side reflects the heat better, I don't mean to also ask if the difference is significant. It's really just curiosity, whether my school physics intuition holds up or lies to me, that's all.

So, "technically yes" is good enough answer for me.

20 minutes agohamstergene

Is it technically true, though? The matte side has a difuse reflection, which does not mean it reflects less. It just scatters more.

7 minutes agosdeframond

The shiny and dull sides look like perfect mirrors in IR wavelengths.

26 minutes agosawjet

Which side is better at reflecting woke beams from space?

9 minutes agorich_sasha

People deeply understand the physics of tinfoil hats. A properly constructed tinfoil hat needs two layers, with the shiny sides facing in opposite directions. Only the shiny side reflects brain waves. You need to reflect in both directions: one direction keeps the government from using waves to put ideas in your head; the other is to keep the government from reading your mind.

5 minutes agoNewCzech

“The final rolling is therefore done on a sandwich of two sheets, face to face.”

5 days agodnemmers

Whomever wrote that clearly has never made or eaten a sandwich. Without something in between the two layers, it’s hardly a sandwich.

41 minutes agoslau

The foil is the 'meat' the rollers are the bread.

38 minutes agomjevans

An open sandwich can have two layers.

35 minutes agoperilunar

Not homogenous though.

33 minutes agovolemo

If it was any more homogeneous it would just be a piece of bread.

27 minutes agoperilunar

that's not a sandwich, it's a pizza

31 minutes agosocalgal2

A pizza is an open sandwich

26 minutes agoperilunar

No, pizza is a toast per Cube Rule - https://cuberule.com/

19 minutes agoekropotin

Toast is an open sandwich, unless it has no topping, in which case it is just bread. Also their definition of cake as having multiple layers makes no sense, and would rule out most actual cakes.