We’ve talked about cars, bridges, industrial uses, but it’s easy to forget that aluminum is in everyday materials and sporting goods. Aluminum bats are common in non-MLB baseball, and aluminum hockey sticks were prominent in the 1990s; one area you may have overlooked is right at your feet – that is, if you’re snowboarding.

Many snowboard manufacturers make their bindings out of aluminum. For example, Ride Snowboards uses 100% aircraft-grade 6061 aluminum alloy. Their reasons? From an engineering perspective, they’re looking at traditional aluminum qualities. For the snowboarder that doesn’t want to think about things like a material’s Young’s Modulus value, it’s easier to say that it’ll make the board lighter with greater binding flexibility and durability. They’ve even put out a video on the topic.

In fact, Ride Snowboards are so high on their aluminum bindings that they offer a limited lifetime warranty (the “limited” aspect of it means it has to be under normal usage – so if you run over your bindings with a car, that doesn’t count). It just goes to show how trusted aluminum is during high-impact, high-velocity environments where every split-second truly counts.