HowStuffWorks "How Gold Works"
[http://www.howstuffworks.com/] SUBSCRIBE Adventure Animals Auto Culture Entertainment Health Home & Garden Lifestyle Money Science Tech Video Shows Quizzes Engineering Environmental Science Forces of Nature Innovation Life Science Military Physical Science Dictionary Science Vs. Myth Space Transportation Home / Science / Physical Science / Chemistry / Chemical Elements More Stuff Like This 10 Absolutely Worst Foods to Eat 5 Sickest Teleporter Accidents Ever Puzzle: Tornado How Gold Works by William Harris Page 1 Introduction to How Gold Works 2 History of Gold: Flashy Coffins and Ancient Egypt 3 History of Gold: The Middle Ages and the Mad Rushes 4 Prospecting and Mining Gold Forget those ruby red slippers, Dorothy. This gold shoe, made in China and yours for the low price of $41,000, will take you a lot farther than Kansas. Zhang Wenkui/ChinaFotoPress/ Getty Images Up Next How could gold save my life? How Aluminum Works Nothing has captured the imagination of humans like gold . Egyptians considered the bright yellow metal to be divine and indestructible, a physical manifestation of the sun itself. The Egyptian word for gold is nub , which survives in the name Nubia, an ancient region in northeast Africa that became a major supplier of the precious metal. Aztecs used the word teocuitlatl -- "excrement of the gods" -- to describe gold. And on the periodic table, gold is represented by the symbol Au, from the Latin aurum , which means "shining dawn." By any name, gold has always been associated with wealth and power. Greed for gold fueled Spanish colonization of the Americas. And the gold rushes of the 19th century, both in California and Australia, triggered a hunger for gold that has hardly been satiated today. You might think that the constant searching, digging and panning would have yielded enough gold to line every road in Oz, but you'd be wrong. In all of history, only 161,000 tons (146,057 metric tons) of gold have been mined [source: National Geographic ]. Compare that to the 5.6 million tons (5.1 million metric tons) of aluminum produced by the United States -- in a single year [source: International Aluminum Institute ]. The rarity of gold, however, is just one reason why people value the metal. Its unique physical and chemical properties also make it useful. A one-ounce piece of gold can be hammered into a sheet five-millionths of an inch thick or drawn out into 50 miles (80 kilometers) of wire [source: Temescu ]. And it's chemically inert, which means it won't react easily with other chemicals. Of course, as Shakespeare once said, "All that glitters is not gold." The shiny wedding band on a bride's finger has its dark underbelly. Gold mining is bad for the environment, producing more waste per ounce than any other metal. More troubling, it's dangerous for the low-wage workers employed around the world to pry the metal from the Earth . Hundreds of miners are killed each year by rockfalls and explosions. Hundreds more are buried alive underground. Understanding all of these issues is critical to understanding how gold works. On the next few pages, we'll study element number 79 on the periodic table and try to to understand the power it holds over our imaginations. Let's start by considering gold's long history, a journey that will take us from the dawn of civilization to the great gold rushes of the late 19th century. Print Cite This! Close Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks article: Harris, William. "How Gold Works" 23 February 2009. HowStuffWorks.com.
30 June 2014. Citation & Date Feedback Page 1 Introduction to How Gold Works 2 History of Gold: Flashy Coffins and Ancient Egypt 3 History of Gold: The Middle Ages and the Mad Rushes 4 Prospecting and Mining Gold 5 Extracting Gold 6 Refining Gold 7 Uses for Gold: Jewelry, Health Care and Technology 8 Gold and Money More To Explore All Things Science 10 Incredible Wind Power Facts 10 Remarkable Exoplanets Fact or Fiction: Earthquakes Top 10 Things That Women Invented Strange, Spooky, Scary: The Supernatural Quiz Watch 100 Greatest Discoveries videos » You Might Also Like How Meth Works As far as stimulating the human central nervous system, meth can hold its shaky, toothless head high. What about this drug makes its sleepless, twitchy, paranoid users so insatiable? What if I put aluminum foil in the microwave? We've all been told not to put aluminum foil in the microwave. Stories of incredible explosions and fires are usually at the center of these ominous warnings. Why is that? Popular Articles Catalysis Galvanizing Aldehyde Most Popular Most Watched Most Popular 5 Sickest Teleporter Accidents Ever What makes us yawn? 10 Heaviest Objects Mankind Has Ever Moved How Solar Cells Work 10 Reasons Why Tesla Is a Scientific God Most Watched How to Make (Almost) Everything Understanding Bridges How do they do it? Why aren't the keys on my computer in alphabetical order? The Most Important Things So Far, Seriously Don't Miss CHECK OUT OUR PODCASTS HOWSTUFFWORKS NEWSLETTER THE LATEST AND GREATEST SUBSCRIBE HOWSTUFFWORKS Adventure Animals Auto Culture Entertainment Health Home & Garden Lifestyle Money Science Tech MORE STUFF Blogs HSW Tools RSS Maps Podcasts Quizzes Newsletters Video HSW Brazil HSW China STUFF WEBSITES BrainStuff CarStuff Fw:Thinking Stuff Mom Never Told You Stuff of Genius Stuff They Don't Want You to Know Stuff to Blow Your Mind Stuff You Missed in History Class Stuff You Should Know CUSTOMER SERVICE Advertising Contact Us Help CORPORATE About Us Careers @ HSW Privacy Policy Visitor Agreement TAKE US WITH YOU FOLLOW US Copyright © 1998-2014 HowStuffWorks, a division of InfoSpace LLC