The Ins, Outs, Ups, and Downs Of Gold

What is gold? Gold is one of the many different chemical elements. It is a valuable precious metal that many seek. It is commonly used in things like coinage.

Gold is found in rocks. It is usually found in the form of a nugget or grain. Some of the time you can find gold in the veins of rocks. These veins are spaces inside the rock that contain crystals.

So what are the characteristics of gold? Gold is soft, shiny, and dense. It is the most malleable metal known to man. Malleable meaning it can be hammered into really thin sheets.

Pure gold is gold that doesn’t contain any additives. It is a very bright yellow. It has a very shiny luster to it. This metal doesn’t oxidize in water or air which helps it maintain its yellow color and lustrous shine.

Pure gold is not cut out for many practical uses due to it being too soft. People discovered a way to hardening pure gold with other metals. The most popular metal mixed with gold is copper. This allowed the gold to be shaped and used for a lot of different things. This also created a need to measure the amount of pure gold mixed in. This unit of measure became known as the carat (k).

Gold has been mined for many years. In 2006 a study was done to see just how much gold had been pulled out of the earth. The results were staggering. Aproximately 158,000 tons of gold were pulled out of the earth by the end of 2006. That is a lot of gold.

Gold has excellent qualities. Due to this excellence it is used in many modern industrial things. Dentist use gold for its ability to avoid corrosion and resist oxidation. Gold is also a great conductor of electricity and is used in modern electronics.

Today we use paper money, but that was not always the case. In the past gold was used for money. The reason that stopped is because there is only so much gold in the world. With paper money you can print as much as you want without fear of hitting a limit. Switzerland in 1999 was the last country to switch from gold to paper money.

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