Ask Sue-belinda

Email: sue-belinda.meehan@outlook.com.au

I RECEIVED a text series from our son. It opened with the ‘standard salutation’ - ‘Hi Mum!’ followed rapidly by ‘Busy?’.

So, I replied and the next text I received was ‘Where do you buy those industrial sized rolls of alfoil you get?’ At this point I’d very much like to point out that I do not buy industrial quantities of aluminium foil – as every woman reading this column is thinking right now, ‘ Where would I store it?’ I guessed that he was referring to my large – all right, very large, 150m roll of aluminium foil in the big dispenser box with the convenient serrated strip. I asked him why he needed large quantities and he told me he wanted to use my ‘ironing trick’.

Well, I was overcome pride, he wants to use my ‘ironing trick’!

Then I had to confess it was not actually mine and I’d read it somewhere eons ago and decided to give it a go. He’s told it to a couple of mates and they’re doing it now as well. In fact, he told me he uses quite a bit of foil as he uses it all the ways I do.

All this got me to thinking about the humble aluminium foil and how incredibly useful it is, so let’s have a look at it shall we? I’ll even share my ‘tricks for making life easier with aluminium foil’ or, as they are called today, ‘hacks’.

First, let’s have a look at the history. Hans Christian Ørsted, a Danish physicist, identified the possible metal from alum in 1825. Before then alum was used as a dyeing mordant (dye fixative) right back to the time of the Ancient Greeks.

Sir Humphrey Davy was ultimately successful in isolating a metallic substance from alum and proposed calling this very elusive element aluminum. British chemists charged with adding new elements to the periodic table simply said no and determined it would be called aluminium following standard naming procedures like those ultimately used to name uranium, germanium, plutonium and so on.

Noah Webster, the famed American creator of the Webster’s Dictionary favoured the spelling of Davy as the scientist who discovered it and omitted ‘aluminium’ from his dictionary altogether using only aluminum.

In fact, type aluminium into your computer and those American made spell checkers will put their wiggly red line under your spelling still.

Aluminium/aluminum was very difficult to refine and only went into commercial refinement in 1856 thanks to the endeavours of Henri Étienne Sainte-clair Deville.

Truth be told, it was so expensive to refine that when the Washington Monument was completed, it was capped with an aluminium pyramid nine inches (23cm) tall.

At the time in the 1880s it was regarded as a rare metal used primarily for jewellery and valued at $US1.10 an ounce.

Back to aluminium foil. By the time aluminium began to be processed cheaply, tin foil was already in use. Primarily used in cigarette packaging, it was useful for keeping the tobacco fresh by keeping out the air. Tin foil was quite brittle though and did not last well. In 1910 Robert Victor Neher took out a patent for his continuous rolling process in which huge rollers pressed aluminium in a thin foil.

He opened his manufacturing plant in Kreuzlingen in Switzerland shortly thereafter.

By 1911, the Bern based chocolate maker Tobler began wrapping its trademark Toblerone chocolate bars in aluminium foil.

It stood up well to the rigorous wrapping processes and kept the chocolate fresher for longer with no unsightly colour changes.

By 1912, soup stock cubes were being wrapped in the new aluminium foil. Manufacturers quickly saw the potential for this product, which could effectively screen out moisture, light, bacteria and oxygen – it was perfect for food and medical packaging.

So, how else can we use it?

•Store leftover cheese in foil – it stays fresher longer and won’t get mouldy.

•It works as a cheap means to keep your RFID (radio frequency identification – the chips on your bank cards) information safe – just wrap your card up securely in it and the aluminium disturbs the RFID readers to protect your data.

•Get your ironing done faster. Put a large wide double thickness sheet of foil under your ironing board cover. It stops the heat escaping through the board and reflects the heat back up again helping to get rid of those wrinkles much faster.

•If you’re painting and want to keep paint off door knobs, just cover it up neatly, tape around the bottom of the knob and you’re good to go.

•Putting a strip of foil around the outer edge of a pie protects it from burning around the edges – once the rest of the top is golden, pull off the foil and finish up.

•If your brown sugar has gone hard, chip off what you need, wrap it tightly in foil and put in the middle of your oven at 150 degrees Celsius for five minutes.

•If polishing the silver drives you nuts, cover the clean silver in clear wrap and then wrap the whole thing in foil – keep out as much air as possible and seal the foil up.

•If your steel wool pad turns to rust, try this – shake out as much water as you can, wrap it in foil and pop it in the freezer. If that seems like too much trouble, you can lengthen the life of the pad by putting it in a little bowl made of foil – empty the water regularly.

Opinions. Too much at stake and neither of these so-called leaders is prepared to accept responsibility for their policies, not everyone agrees with the net-zero policy, especially when the big polluters China and India are building coal fired power stations, while we are being shut down, so speak up now, so we know what and who to vote for. CRIS, WULGURU

Turned the telly on and every commentator says Labor will romp home with Greens preferences. Greens preferences. No matter how much they deny they are Greens through and through. JR, 4810

Please Liberal/conservatives read and follow Peta Credlin’s solid advice in Sunday’s paper or we’ll have a socialist republic and then there won’t be any other parties. COL, ROSSLEA

You are not voting for Albanese, you are voting for the policies of the left wing of the Labor Party. Antieverything party. JOHNNY,

RANGEWOOD

Hagar the Humorous, although Scott and I are of one mind on the subject of ‘too little, too late’ Thompson’s votebuying eleventh-hour change of heart on crime funding, we’re not the same person. STEVE, BELGIAN GARDENS

Garbage that was meant to be collected on Friday morning was finally collected at 11.47am on Sunday. Maybe if chairwoman Jenny

spent less time serving ratepayer funded sausages and beer to her militant union comrades on Labour Day and more time on fighting crime our city would not be in such a mess. Get the junior criminals collecting my garbage in hand carts and cleaning up my yard in chain gangs. SIR JOHN, RAILWAY ESTATE

Labor local government and the city looks grottier every day. Labor state government and we have endless crime and still no water security.

Unbelievable that many want Labor for federal government for more incompetence and waste? NJC, KIRWAN

Lee, Condon. You painted such a rosy picture of life under a Labor government, if my wife and I had not already pre polled, we would have voted for them to enjoy the sheer magic of what you have described. REB, KELSO

Well Shari if you are a real swinging voter and vote on facts and not policies or people then you should get yours right. The reason we sailed through the GFC with hardly a scratched knee is because Rudd gave away the surplus that John Howard had built up and gave it out to all the people that didn’t deserve it who in turn spent it instantly. It did in fact cushion the economy but it was the Howard government’s money that Rudd gave away. THOMAS,

SOUTH TOWNSVILLE

I see Burdekin dam is over (it is T’ville water supply, the Ross is to stop flood). Forget Hells Gates and pipe and just lift the Burdekin, trickle feed by gravity to T’ville and put hydro in. MARTY, MT LOUISA