What would you say if someone told you that you can eat gold?
You’d probably say that they were mad, right? However, gold is edible! It can also be used to create electrical circuits in washing machines, protect spacecraft from heat damage and even treat arthritis. In short, gold is much more than just a pretty face.
A soft metal with a characteristic yellow colour, gold is prized for its rarity and beauty. It has been used for thousands of years to create jewellery and to decorate everything from plates to buildings. However, beyond its obvious good looks, gold is much more useful than most people first suspect.
SUBARBAN GOLD MINES
After a quick glance around your own home, you probably wouldn’t expect to discover too much gold. However, if you know where to look, you’ll find that the average suburban house is a genuine gold mine!
For starters, this precious metal is used to create the contacts, wires and connectors for electronic devices such as mobile phones, computers and even washing machines. This is because electricity travels exceptionally well through gold. Also, gold does not corrode, preventing it from tarnishing and disrupting the function of the device it has been used to create.
Another place you’ll find gold is sandwiched inside recordable compact discs. Such discs take advantage of the fact that gold is highly reflective, providing a perfect surface for laser beams to bounce off. Gold is also an excellent reflector of heat. Thus, many satellites and other spacecraft have a golden lining - to protect them from the heat of the sun.
A GOLDEN GLOW INSIDE
One way you might like to try searching for gold is by asking your mum or dad to open their mouth and say,
“Ahhh!”. You see, pure gold was once used to fill cavities in teeth, principally because the metal is biocompatible - that is, it doesn’t corrode inside your body and resists the formation of bacteria on its surface. Mixtures of gold and other metals are still used to create dental crowns and bridges.
Because of gold’s biocompatibility, the metal is also used to make many other medical materials. These include wires for pacemakers, devices to hold open weakened blood vessels, and inner ear implants.
Since gold doesn’t react with substances inside your body to form toxins, gold leaf is sometimes used to decorate cakes, jellies and other sweet treats. However, as well as adding a little beauty to a dessert, the addition of this precious metal also considerably sweetens its cost!
At the opposite extreme of usefulness, several gold compounds have been used for many years to effectively treat rheumatoid arthritis. Other gold compounds are currently being developed as treatments for HIV and some cancers.
A valuable gold encrusted cake is one thing, but the fact that gold could soon be used to fight several devastating diseases makes this already precious metal utterly invaluable.
An average child weighing around 55kg will contain about 0.0055g of gold.
The ocean contains around 1mg of gold per tonne of seawater. However, the cost of recovering this gold is worth more than the metal itself.
One litre of water weighs one kilogram, however one litre of gold tips the scales at just over nineteen kilograms!
One ounce of gold (28g) can be beaten into a sheet 9 metres square and a just 0.000018cm thick. The same amount of gold can be stretched into a wire 80km long and a staggering 5 millionths of a metre in diameter.
Q: Why do people mention carrots when they talk about gold?
A: In terms of gold, its “carats”, not “carrots”! The word refers to how pure an item made from gold actually is. Something that is made from 24 carat gold is made from pure gold. Anything containing less than 24 carats is not pure, consisting of gold mixed with other metals. A carat was originally a measure of weight used by ancient merchants in the Middle East - it was based on the weight of carob beans!
