What is gold?

Have you been living under a nugget your whole life?

 

Pure gold

Gold is the most malleable of metals. It can be drawn into a wire one atom thick.

A gram of gold can be pressed into a sheet 11 square feet (1 square meter) and an ounce into 300 square feet (28 square meters).

It can be pressed thin enough to become semi-transparent.

All of the gold mined throughout history, would fit into the bottom 100 feet of the 500 feet Washington monument. Hard to believe eh? But its true.

You've heard the saying 'Put it to the acid test' haven't you? Nitric acid dissolves base metals but not gold, so it is used to confirm the presence of gold in metallic substances and that's where the saying comes from.

The James Webb telescope's mirrors are coated in gold 600 atoms thick. That amounts to just over 1 square inch (2.5 square centimetres) of gold in total.

It is thought to have been used by humans since 40,000 BC. Yup, that many zeros ago!

Gold donut

Yum!

Gold is edible. It won't turn you into a rich bitch if you eat it, though you probably already are if you do, but it is not harmful to humans and is used by them posh people as sprinkles on chocolate-covered donuts!

This donut will set you back $100.

'All that glitters is not gold'. Indeed it's not, because gold does not glitter, it glisters. Bet you didn't know that!

24k (karat) is pure gold, but pure gold is rarely used in Jewellery as it is too soft. Instead, base metals are added, resulting in 22k, 18k & 14k being the most common alloyed gold used to make Jewellery.

Times is a changin'. As of 2020, approximately 30 percent of the world's gold supply is recycled, rather than mined.

Where has most of the gold in the world ended up? No, it's not in the Vatican, it's around the necks of women in India!

What is White Gold?
White gold is an alloy containing approximately 75% gold plus 25% nickel and zinc. Incidentally, 75% gold content is 18 karat gold.

What is Black Gold?
What is referred to as black gold is in fact a mixture of gold and a metal such as cobalt, which is ion plated onto a piece of Jewellery to make it black. Why would anyone in their right mind pay the price of gold and it be black?

This is about where I'd give you a link to check out the gold Jewellery we have, but we don't have any. It's out of the price range of what we offer, but who knows what the future will hold when we too can afford to poop gold in the morning!

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