Why is gold valuable
...etal is very malleable and very ductile. Gold can be hammered into very thin sheets, approaching just a few layers of atoms thick, and it can be drawn in to very thin wires. One ounce of gold can be drawn into a very thin wire 100 km long! Gold is also one of the best conductors of electricity and heat which made it a valuable substance in science and engineering labs later during the industrial revolution. (Grolier 227) The most important characteristic of gold, however, is that it is durable. Pure gold is unreactive to water, air, and most other chemicals. The few solvents are aqua regia, cyanide solutions, and chloride, bromide, and some iodide compounds. (Grolier 227) This property, along with the relative rarity of the metal itself, made gold a prime candidate for coinage to currency. (Barclay 40) Gold is often found in ores along with other valuable metals such as silver and copper. It is found in quartz veins, with iron pyrites, and most famously, it can be found lying around in the deposits of mountain streams and rivers around the globe. These are all the locations that miners find gold. The largest local of untapped gold is that worlds oceans. At one part gold per one hundred million parts sea water, it is estimated that our oceans hold 9 millions tons of gold. It would cost more to extract this gold that the gold itself is worth however and it is not a viable option at this time. (Grolier, 226) It is a fact that many men have given up, and in many cases wasted, their lives in the pursuit of gold. By the earliest alchemist it was referred to as the “perfect metal”. Bernard Trevisan was perhaps one of the saddest cases of “gold fever.” Trevisan was an alchemist born in 1406 of a wealthy family in Padua. (Jaffe, 2) He spent his entire inheritance and many other peoples’ money as well in the pursuit of gold. Trevisan’s quest was not in a mine, but in the laboratory. He spent his life trying in vain to find the formula which could bring about gold by transmutation. He made other discoveries in his life, but the search for gold consumed him until he died poor and a failure, never knowing his task was impossible. (Jaffe, 10) Most alchemist and eventually chemists would try this false hope until it was realized that gold was a element and transmutation a farce. Even Newton tried at this in his small laboratory as a youth. (Jaffe, 12) Gallons of sweat have been spilt in the process of mining gold. Because of its properties of malleability and ductility, gold has been one of the easiest metals to mine. One can obtain small amounts of gold in mountains streams with little else than a slotted pan or by just gathering it in very rich areas. In the quartz veins and in the ore of the mountains, the hammer was the best way of releasing the earth of her riches. (Cobb, 7) The vast movement of humans to the A...