This bauxite is purified, and the result is a fine white powder, which is pure alumina, and consists of the metal aluminum and the gas oxygen. Cryolite is now melted by electricity. The white powder is put into it, and dissolves just as sugar dissolves in water. The electricity keeps on working, and now it separates the alumina into its two parts. The aluminum is a little heavier than the melted cryolite, and therefore it settles and may be drawn off at the bottom of the melting-pot. There are a good many reasons why aluminum is useful. As has been said it is strong and light and does not rust in moisture. You can beat it into sheets as thin as gold leaf, and you can draw it into the finest wire. It is softer than silver, and it can be punched into almost any form. It is the most accommodating of metals. You can hammer it in the cold until it becomes as hard as soft iron. Then, if you need to have it soft again, it will become so by melting. It takes a fine polish and is not affected, as silver is, by the fumes which are thrown off by burning coal; and so keeps its color when silver would turn black. Salt water does not hurt it in the least, and few of the acids affect it. Another good quality is that it conducts electricity excellently. It is true that copper will do the same work with a smaller wire; but the aluminum is much lighter and so cheap that the larger wire of aluminum costs less than the smaller one of copper, and its use for this purpose is on the increase. It conducts heat as well as silver. If you put one spoon of aluminum, one of silver, and one that is "plated" into a cup of hot water, the handles of the first two will almost burn your fingers before the third is at all uncomfortable to touch. [Illustration: A "MOVIE" OF AN ALUMINUM FUNNEL _Courtesy The Aluminum Cooking Utensil Company._ Seventeen other operations are necessary after the thirteenth stamping operation before the funnel is ready to be sold. And after all this work, we can buy it for 35 cents at any hardware store.]