Gold - there isn't anything like it!

| Saturday, December 24, 2011
By Tom Snow


Gold is a metallic substance, constituting one of the most valuable metals employed in the common commercial medium of exchange. It's got a characteristic yellow colour, is one of the heaviest substances, malleable and pliable. It's reasonably changeless by heat, moisture, and most corrosive agents.

Gold is one of most valuable minerals mined from the Earth. Its usability springs from a diversity of special properties. Gold conducts electricity, does not tarnish, is easy to work, can be drawn into wire, can be hammered into thin sheets, alloys with many other metals, can be softened and cast into highly detailed shapes, has a superb color and magnificent luster. Gold is an impressive metal that occupies a special place in the human mind.

Pure gold is too soft to stand up to the strains applied to most jewelry items. Craftsmen learned that alloying gold with other metals like copper, silver, and platinum would increase its durability. Since then, most gold used to make jewellery is an amalgamate of gold with one or two other metals. Alloying gold with other metals changes the color of the finished products. An amalgamate of 75 % gold, 16% silver and 9% copper yields yellow gold. White gold is an alloy of 75 % gold, 4% silver, 4% copper and 17% palladium. Other alloys yield pink, green, peach and even black colored metals.

Gold was first found in the area of Eastern Europe about 4,000 B.C. Gold has been discovered in its natural state in streams all around the world. People in the Transylvanian Alps and around Mount Pangaion in Thrace were first to mine it to use for decorative purposes. A sense of extremely refined decoration was reputedly the explanation that the Middle Eastern people of the Sumer civilization in Southern Iraq, circa 3,000 B.C., began to use it to make jewelry. Gold was first used as currency in ancient Greece. The Greeks mined for gold across the Mediterranean and Middle East regions by five hundred fifty BC.

There's large amount of lost gold treasure waiting to be discovered all around the globe. Many such treasures have been documented, but many other treasures have not begun to be discovered. Beach hikers have found and picked up many gold coins thru the yearsâ€"as the tide force and wave action give up many of the ocean's treasures. There are lots of books and articles released to help treasure searchers find hidden gold treasures.

While the production of ornamental objects was probably the 1st use of gold over six thousand years ago, today most gold that's newly mined or recycled is utilized in the creation of jewelry. About 78% of the gold consumed annually, is used to create jewelry. A small amount of gold is employed in pretty much every sophisticated electrical gadget today. This includes cellular telephones, calculators, personal digital assistants, global positioning system units, and other tiny electronic gadgets. Most larger electronic appliances such as television sets and PCs also contain gold. One challenge with the use of gold in small quantities in such devices is the loss of the metal from society. Nearly one billion cellular phones are produced each year and many of them contain about 50 cents worth of gold. Their average lifetime is under 2 years and few are currently recycled. Although the quantity of gold is small in each device, their enormous numbers translate into lots of un-recycled gold.




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