Thanks for the heads up Frank. It appears, that as nice as it originally sounded, aluminium is still not see through. Here"s a snipet for you!
Oops. Bad Fish Causes Gurgling.
Bad News: I jumped to some erroneous conclusions, and my mailbox exploded. Transparent Aluminium doesn"t exist.
Good News: This indicates many polite, educated people are actually reading the site, as none of the mail called me an idiot and about 80% of it was thoroughly educational.
Point of contention: The article states the substance in question is alumina, which I presumed was simply a German spelling of aluminum (despite being closer to a latin-based spelling)...partially spurred on by the caption to the picture in the original article actually saying "transparent aluminum." My science background not being in chemistry, I completely missed that alumina is shorthand for aluminium oxide... a ceramic, which is why it makes more sense for a company specializing in ceramics to have developed a transparent version of it.
Oh well.....