Thanks to a retro post on kottke.org, I watched this video about how aluminum cans are made.
It's only 11 minutes long, and as Jason Kottke says, it's not boring for even a second.
Most of what it describes about the process didn't surprise me, but I didn't know that cans are ironed to reach their final height, or that the properties of the liquid inside the can are essential to maintaining the cans' pressure and overall strength.
A separate thing that fascinates me about a topic like this, which isn't covered in the video, is how it illustrates the complexity of modern society. So many unmentioned factors underlie the existence of a factory that can produce something like aluminum cans, plus a society with a system to distribute them and carry out reliable financial exchange, not to mention a country or world with a market of people large enough to buy that number of products on a daily basis.
If I let myself think about it, it overshadows the wow factor of the can production itself, as dazzling as that is.
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