JWST 09: Not So Heavy Metal

Most of our students are at least passingly familiar with iron, copper, aluminum, even gold, silver, and mercury, but most of them - and many of us as well - are far less familiar with other metals, many of which are absolutely essential for many of our industrial processes.

Here we get a look at the mining and processing of beryllium ore into beryllium dust - which is sadly not shown in the video but is given a sodium chloride stand-in.

In the next video we get a look at how the beryllium powder is melting and cast into blanks, how the blanks are then processed into mirrors for the James Webb space telescope, how the  mirrors are checked for defects and then partially hollowed out to reduce their weight.