Many of you probably have parents or grandparents who own silver serveware. (Or if you don’t, we’re pretty sure you know somebody who owns some.) What do you know about silver?

Silver, by nature, is a precious metal that is also a naturally occurring metal, but it’s also subject to chemical reactions. In the case of silver, when it reacts with sulfur in the air, silver becomes tarnished, and it’s unavoidable.  Tarnish is the dull gray or black coating that forms on the surface of silver, like in the photo above. And we don’t know about you, but we would call that ugly!

Aluminum is an element that has the look of silver but it very different in terms of properties. Unlike silver, aluminum is never found in its native element (it cannot exist because it loves oxygen) and is almost always an alloy with other metals. This combination gives aluminum a low density and because it already combines with oxygen, it has a high resistance to corrosion and tarnishing. That does not mean that it is perfect; the metal can still be harmed if not properly taken care of. (Aluminum is also referred to as pewter, though true pewter is not approved by the FDA. We’ll write a future post about pewter.)

tarnished silver vs aluminum