The Aluminum Can is a Modern Marvel, Here’s Why

As the days get warmer and the sun shines longer, our thoughts turn to cracking open cold beverages. Backyard barbecues, lazy days at the beach, picnics in the park, all activities that go better with a nice cold can in your hand. But for all the joy they bring us, do we spare a thought for the simple aluminum can? Professor Bill Hammack does, and he’s here to geek out about the pure genius of the aluminum beverage can.

There is a lot to unpack in this video. First up, humans make half a trillion aluminum cans every year. That’s so many cans! We’re trying so hard to wrap our heads around that, we don’t even understand why, just to take one of the many examples in this video, a dome takes less metal than a flat surface. But luckily Prof. Hammack, aka Bill the EngineerGuy, is here to break it down.