- It is the only metal which is Yellow or golden in colour. Other metals are only yellow if they have oxidised or reacted with something. The word gold itself comes from the Old English word for yellow. While on the subject of words, the Aztec word for gold, "teocuitatl," translates as "excrement of the gods."
- The atomic number for gold is 79. Its chemical symbol is Au, which comes from the old Latin name for gold, aurum, which means "shining dawn" or "glow of sunrise". It melts at 1064.18 °C/1947.52 °F and boils at 2970 °C/5378 °F. Not much will dissolve it - anyone wanting to dissolve gold needs some stuff called aqua regia, a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid.
- It is the heaviest and densest metal in the Periodic Table - a cubic foot of gold weighs about 1,187 pounds. Yet it is extremely malleable and ductile. Pure gold is so soft it can be moulded with the hands. Malleability is a measure of how easily a material can be hammered into thin sheets - and gold can be made into extremely thin sheets - so thin they are transparent, so it can be used in astronauts' helmets to reflect infrared rays while allowing sunlight to pass through, and the windows of aircraft to help prevent ice from forming. Thin sheets of gold appear greenish blue because gold strongly reflects red and yellow. Ductile metals can be stretched into wire. An ounce of gold could be stretched into a wire 60 miles long. It can even be used as embroidery thread.
- It's also non-toxic. It is used in medicine - liquid gold is injected into the muscles of people with rheumatoid arthritis; and it can be eaten. Some extremely expensive restaurants add gold flakes to meals. Hence gold has an E number: E175, which is suitable for consumption by vegetarians, vegans and members of all religious groups. Compounds of gold, however, can be extremely toxic.
- The measure of the purity of gold, the carat, was originally a unit of mass based on the carob seed used by ancient merchants. 24 carat gold is pure gold. 18 carat gold is 75% pure gold; 14 carat gold is 58.5% pure gold and 10 carat gold is 41.7% pure gold.
- Gold is surprisingly rare. Only around 160,000 tons of it have ever been mined throughout history. All the gold that has ever been mined would fit in to three Olympic sized swimming pools, or make a cube just 21 metres square. More steel is created per hour than there has been gold dug up throughout history.
- Even so, there is gold under all seven continents on Earth. Scientists believe there is gold on Mars, Mercury and Venus, as well, and that most of the gold on Earth came from Meteorites. Only about 20% of the gold buried underground on Earth has been mined. Two thirds of that came from South Africa.
- The best place to go mining for gold isn't a gold mine. The average gold mine produces 5g of gold per tonne of rock. If, however, you collect a tonne of old mobile phones, you could recover 150g of gold.
- There is also a lot of gold in the sea. Wrecks of ships containing cargoes of gold notwithstanding (the USA once had a locksmith diver who did very well for himself diving down to wrecks and picking the locks on underwater safes) there is 25 tons of gold in every cubic mile of seawater. However, there is no way to economically recover it.
- Alchemists throughout history have tried to come up with ways of turning base metals into gold. King Charles II and Isaac Newton both tried it in their day. Another person who tried was Bernard of Treves in the fifteenth century. His recipe was as follows: take 2,000 Egg yolks, mix them with equal parts of oil and vitriol and burn over a slow Fire for two weeks. However, it didn't work, and poisoned his Pigs to boot. Scientists today do know how to turn Lead into gold. It is actually possible. The nucleus of a lead atom has 82 protons. The nucleus of a gold atom has 79 protons. All you have to do is eliminate three lead protons. Easy. But don't try it at home. It can only be done with a nuclear reactor, and the gold produced would be so radioactive it would be useless anyway.
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