Top 10 Fun Facts About Gold
Most people buy gold strictly for investment purposes, or to have for protection against an economy such as ours incase our dollar collapses. But Gold is not all about investing and protection! Believe it or not, there was actually a time when gold was fun to have and even fun to look for! However, government intervened and now it is almost a necessity to protect yourself from inflation and a flat out collapse of our country. Thats why we want to show some of the fun facts about gold! Here are ten of the top 100 interesting facts about gold that you probably never knew! 10. Gold is used in window glass and astronaut helmets to reflect infrared rays while allowing sunlight to pass through, and at the same time keeping it cool. 9. Gold is chemically liquified and injected into the muscles of thousands of rheumatoid arthritis victims in the U.S., and it is said that the treatment is successful in seven out of ten cases. 8. In every cubic mile of sea water there is 25 tons of gold! That’s a total of about 10 billion tons of gold in the oceans; however, there’s no known way to economically recover it. 7. Gold can be hammered into sheets so thin that a pile of them an inch high would contain more than 200,000 separate sheets. 6. A single ounce of gold can be drawn into a wire 60 miles long. 5. The largest gold nugget found in the U.S. weighed 195 pounds; it came from California. 4. Gold is so heavy that one cubic foot of it weighs half a ton. 3. A one-ounce gold nugget is more rare to find than a five-carat diamond. 2. All of the gold in the world could be compressed into an 18-yard cube, which is about 1/10 the mass of the Washington Monument. 1. Gold is said to be so rare that the world pours more steel in an hour than it has poured gold since time began. If you liked this post on the interesting facts about gold, then you should read our post on the top 6 common uses for gold. Published by: Eric Sepanek http://www.sbcgold.com/blog/top-10-fun-facts-about-gold/ All About Gold!Just the facts • Atomic Number (number of protons in the nucleus): 79 • Atomic Symbol (on the Periodic Table of Elements): Au • Atomic Weight (average mass of the atom): 196.9665 • Density: 19.3 grams per cubic centimeter • Phase at Room Temperature: Solid • Melting Point: 1,947.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1,064.18 degrees C) • Boiling Point: 5,162 degrees F (2,850 degrees C) • Number of isotopes (atoms of the same element with a different number of neutrons): Between 18 and 59, depending on where the line for an isotope is drawn. Many artificially created gold isotopes are stable for microseconds or milliseconds before decaying into other elements. One stable isotope. • Most common isotopes: Au-197, which makes up 100 percent of naturally occurring gold. Gold: Shiny star matter Humans have been decorating themselves with gold since at least 4000 B.C., according to the National Mining Association. From Eastern Europe to the Middle East to the tombs of Egyptian Pharaohs, gold appears throughout the ancient world. A Stone Age woman found buried outside of London wore a strand of gold around her neck; Celts in the third century B.C. wore gold dental implants; a Chinese king who died in 128 B.C. was buried with gold-gilded chariots and thousands of other precious objects. Gold is malleable and shiny, making it a good metalworking material. Chemically speaking, gold is a transition metal. Transition metals are unique, because they can bond with other elements using not just their outermost shell of electrons (the negatively charged particles that whirl around the nucleus), but also the outermost two shells. This happens because the large number of electrons in transition metals interferes with the usual orderly sorting of electrons into shells around the nucleus. All the gold that makes up earrings and cufflinks and electronics components today originated in space: According to a 2011 paper in the journal Nature, a meteor bombardment nearly 4 billion years ago brought 20 billion billion tons of a gold-and-precious-metal-rich space rock to Earth. Tracing gold's origin back even further takes us into deep space. A 2013 study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters found that all of the gold in the universe was likely birthed during the collisions of dead stars known as neutron stars. Veins of gold mined from the earth are the result of hot fluids flowing through gold-bearing rock, picking up gold and concentrating it in fractures, according to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Who knew? • Two-thirds of the world's gold is mined in South Africa, according to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. • Seventy-eight percent of the world's yearly supply of gold is used in jewelry, according to the AMNH. The rest goes to electronics and dental and medical uses. • The atomic symbol of gold, Au, comes from the Latin word for gold, aurum. • Astronaut helmets come equipped with a visor coated with a thin layer of gold. The gold blocks harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun. • The world's largest gold crystal is the size of a golf ball and comes from Venezuela. The 7.7-ounce (217.78 grams) crystal is worth about $1.5 million. • Earthquakes can create gold: A 2013 study in the journal Nature Geoscience found that during earthquakes, water in faults and fractures vaporizes, leaving gold behind. • Because gold is soft, it is typically mixed with other metals, or alloys, to give it strength. Measured on the karat scale, pure gold is 24 karats. The word karat derives from the Arabic qirat, or carob bean, according to Merriam-Webster. Carob beans were once used by gold sellers to balance their scales. • The first purely gold coins were manufactured in the Asia Minor kingdom of Lydia in 560 B.C., according to the National Mining Association. • Gold has a number of artificial, unstable isotopes (the exact number depends on the scientist you consult), but occurs naturally only as Au-197. • You can eat gold … if you really want to. Gourmet shops sell edible gold leaf and flakes that add glitter to everything from pastries to vodka to olive oil. Don't fear for your stomach: The gold isn't digested and just passes right through, according to Edible Gold, a company that sells gold leaf. Ongoing research Gold is still used in jewelry, of course, but this element has also gone high-tech. Gold is an excellent conductor of electricity and is very non-reactive with air, water and most other substances, meaning it won't corrode or tarnish. Gold is also used in medicine. The radioactive gold isotope Au-198 can be injected directly into the site of a tumor, where its radiation can destroy tumor cells without much spillover to the rest of the body. In 2012, researchers reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they could link nanoparticles of Au-198 with a compound found in tea leaves to treat prostrate cancer. The tea compound is attracted to the tumor cells, keeping the nanoparticles glued to the right spot for several weeks while the radiation treatment occurs. (The method has yet to be tested on humans.) In some cases, gold nanoparticles are the only way a drug can work. The anti-cancer drug TNF-alpha kills cancer very effectively. Unfortunately, it's also incredibly toxic to healthy cells. However, clinical trials now underway have found that linking TNF-alpha drugs to gold nanoparticles can successfully treat tumors, because the drugs hit their targets directly, according to Benchmarks, an online publication of the National Cancer Institute. There's just one problem with humanity's continued love affair with gold: Getting it out of the ground. About 83 percent of the 2,700 tons of gold mined each year is extracted using a process called gold cyanidation, said Zhichang Liu, a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry at Northwestern University in Illinois. This process uses cyanide to leach gold out of the rock that holds it. Unfortunately, cyanide is toxic, and the process is anything but environmentally friendly. There could be hope for lovers of gold baubles (and electronic circuits and nanomedicine), however. In 2013 Liu and his colleagues reported in the journal Nature Communications that they'd stumbled upon a way to extract gold from ore with benign starch rather than toxic cyanide. "Actually, we found this method by accident," Liu told Live Science. While trying to fabricate a porous material, the researchers mixed a starch called alpha-Cyclodextrin with gold salts (charged molecules of gold). To their surprise, the gold precipitated out of the solution rapidly. The team has patented the method, which easily extracts gold at more than 97 percent purity in one step, Liu said. They're now working with investors to scale up the process. "Hopefully, we can find a nice, green way to replace the cyanidation process," Liu said. Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. http://www.livescience.com/39187-facts-about-gold.html El Dorado El Dorado Legend Snared Sir Walter Raleigh. The scene depicted in this ancient artwork, on display at the Gold Museum in Bogota, Colombia, shows the origin of the El Dorado myth. Legend tells of a Muisca king who would cover himself in gold dust during festivals, then dive from a raft into Lake Guatavita. By Willie Drye The lust for gold spans all eras, races, and nationalities. To possess any amount of gold seems to ignite an insatiable desire to obtain more. Through the centuries, this passion gave rise to the enduring tale of a city of gold. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans believed that somewhere in the New World there was a place of immense wealth known as El Dorado. Their searches for this treasure wasted countless lives, drove at least one man to suicide, and put another man under the executioner's ax. "El Dorado shifted geographical locations until finally it simply meant a source of untold riches somewhere in the Americas," says Jim Griffith, a folklorist in Tucson, Arizona. But this place of immeasurable riches hasn't been found. The origins of El Dorado lie deep in South America. And like all enduring legends, the tale of El Dorado contains some scraps of truth. When Spanish explorers reached South America in the early 16th century, they heard stories about a tribe of natives high in the Andes mountains in what is now Colombia. When a new chieftain rose to power, his rule began with a ceremony at Lake Guatavita. Accounts of the ceremony vary, but they consistently say the new ruler was covered with gold dust, and that gold and precious jewels were thrown into the lake to appease a god that lived underwater. The Spaniards started calling this golden chief El Dorado, "the gilded one." The ceremony of the gilded man supposedly ended in the late 15th century when El Dorado and his subjects were conquered by another tribe. But the Spaniards and other Europeans had found so much gold among the natives along the continent's northern coast that they believed there had to be a place of great wealth somewhere in the interior. The Spaniards didn't find El Dorado, but they did find Lake Guatavita and tried to drain it in 1545. They lowered its level enough to find hundreds of pieces of gold along the lake's edge. But the presumed fabulous treasure in the deeper water was beyond their reach. Raleigh's Quest English courtier Sir Walter Raleigh made two trips to Guiana to search for El Dorado. During his second trip in 1617, he sent his son, Watt Raleigh, with an expedition up the Orinoco River. But Walter Raleigh, then an old man, stayed behind at a base camp on the island of Trinidad. The expedition was a disaster, and Watt Raleigh was killed in a battle with Spaniards. Eric Klingelhofer, an archaeologist at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, says Walter Raleigh was furious at the survivor who informed him of Watt's death and accused the survivor of letting his son be killed. "The man goes into his cabin on the ship and kills himself," says Klingelhofer, who is trying to find the site of Raleigh's base camp on Trinidad. Raleigh returned to England, where King James ordered him beheaded for, among other things, disobeying orders to avoid conflict with the Spanish. The legend of El Dorado endures because "you want it to be true," says Jose Oliver, a lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. "I don't think we've ever stopped seeking El Dorado." So where is this lost city of gold? In his 1849 poem "El Dorado," writer Edgar Allan Poe offers an eerie and eloquent suggestion: Over the Mountains of the Moon, down the Valley of the Shadow, ride, boldly ride…if you seek for El Dorado." http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/archaeology/el-dorado/
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AuthorI am a Life Coach, a Color Wisdom Card Practitioner, and yes, even a Professor (political science, State University of New York at Albany). I use the Color Wisdom Cards to support clients in exploring priorities and taking concrete actions to stay on track with the goals they set. Because in my own life I have overcome a lot of self-doubt, I want to work with people towards more confidence and self-empowerment. You can do it! What is it you want to do? Categories
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