Gold – The Many Uses Of

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.

Gold has many great characteristics. It is soft, easy to shape, and is dense. It is the most malleable of all metals known. If a metal is malleable it means it can be hammered into thin sheets.

The purest form of gold is known as pure gold. Pure gold doesn\’t contain any additional substances. It is a very attractive metal. It has a bright yellow luster about it. A bonus you get with pure gold is its ability to not oxidize in air or water. This allows it to keep its luster and 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).

How much gold is there in the world? There was a study done in the year 2006. This study found that by the end of 2006 about 158,000 tons of gold had been pulled from the earth. That\’s a whole lot of gold.

Gold has many excellent qualities. It is a great conductor of electricity. It is used in electronics. It has a unique ability to avoid corrosion or oxidation. This makes it a perfect metal for dentistry.

Gold has been most known for its use as money in the past. This ended with the introduction of paper currency. The reason being that there is only so much gold in the world. Paper money can be printed without limit. The last country to use gold to back their money was Switzerland.

Read Aaron\’s article about gold studs.