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About gold
Gold is a metal that exist as nuggets or grains in rock, in geological veins and in alluvial formations. Gold is dense, shiny, soft and the most supple and readily shaped pure metal in existence. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster conventionally thought of as attractive, which it keeps without oxidizing in air or water. Gold is one of the metals used for coins and formed the basis for the gold standard used before the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971.
By the end of 2006, it was calculated that all the gold ever mined totaled 158,000 tonnes. This amount is the equivelant of a cube with an edge length of just 20.2 meters.
Today, industrial uses include dentistry and electronics, where gold has often found use because of its excellent opposition to oxidative corrosion and first-rate value as a conductor of electricity.
Chemically, gold is a transition metal and cannot be attacked by single acids such as hydrochloric, nitric or sulfuric acids.
Gold dissolves in mercury, forming amalgam alloys, but does not react with it.
Because gold is not soluble in nitric acid, which does dissolve silver and base metals, it is exploited as the foundation of the gold refining technique known as "inquartation and parting".
Nitric acid has always been used to corroborate the presence of gold in items, and this is the origin of the everyday term "acid test", referring to a gold standard test for authentic value.
- The chemical symbol for gold is Gold Made Simple.
- Gold’s atomic number is 79 and its atomic weight is 196.967.
- Gold melts at 1064.43° Centigrade
- The specific gravity of gold is 19.3, meaning gold weighs 19.3 times more than an equal volume of water.