Gold
Gold is a chemical element (symbol Au, atomic number 79). It is not chemically reactive, and is found in elemental form as nuggets or grains in rocks and rivers that eroded them. Its apparent indestructibility, brightness, and color have made it very desirable throughout recorded history. It was used as a basis for currency for a really long time. Due to its high malleability, ductility, resistance to corrosion, and electrical conductivity it also has multiple industrial (EM shielding), medical (restorative dentistry), and food related applications (goldschlager). The world consumption of new gold produced is estimated to be about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry.[citation needed]
[edit] Fun facts
This list of miscellaneous information is endorsed by the RationalWiki Pub Quiz Team!
- Gold is an excellent conductor of electricity, and as mentioned above, does not oxidize or corrode like some other metals. For this reason, its most widespread industrial use is in computer board applications. A secondary use is in audio/video connections.
- Gold was one of the gifts brought by the Magi at the birth of Jesus. (Actually, about two years or so afterwards - but meh! details!)
- As gold is a special shiny metal, it has attracted the attention of alternative medicine promoters and New Age kooks, who imbue it with all kinds of mystical properties. For instance, colloidal gold is available through many dubious online alternative pharmacy sites as a cure-all along the lines of colloidal silver. Likewise, monoatomic gold powder is said to open the third eye, promote the development of psychic powers, and so on.
- The colour of gold is a metallic yellow, rather than metallic grey or white, due to relativistic effects of the electrons in the Au atom which subtly changes in the predicted electronic structure of the atom. Without those effects, gold would look very similar to silver. Gold nanoparticles (because the colour of nano-particle is related more to light interacting with vibrational modes called phonons) are red.
- Gold is a soft metal. Because of this, it can easily be shaped into jewelry, flattened into sheets or spun into wire, which you can wrap around your waist for financial security if you are prone to sudden, unexpected and random instances of time travel.
- Gold alloys typically list their purity in "karats", where 1 karat is 1/24 pure gold by weight. 14 karat gold jewelry, for example, is 14/24 gold and 10/24 something else (typically zinc). Don't confuse this with the "carats" used for weighing diamonds; you can have a 14 karat gold ring with a 1 carat diamond on it.
- Gold is very dense (19.3 grams per cubic centimeter at room temperature). By coincidence, tungsten has the same density, so if you're going to buy a cheap knockoff piece of jewelry for your sweetie and claim it's gold, get it made out of tungsten.
- A whole bunch of cranks, survivalists and libertarians have a gold standard fetish. This is most likely because gold and other precious metals were one of the best performing asset classes in the decade 2000-2010.
- Alchemy promises the ability to transmute lead and other substances into gold by removing the imbalanced elements in those substances that impurify them and prevent them from being gold. To do so, you must merely turn the cryptic descriptions of allegedly successful transmutations found in alchemy texts into an accurate recipe. Current chemistry does not hold this to be directly possible without the use of nuclear fusion and fission; but given the potential payout it still may be worth a try.
- Talking about huge sums of money and want to visualize and de-abstratify it? You can use Smaug the Dragon's gold hoard as a fun unit of measurement.