Discovery Information
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Who: Known to the ancients. |
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Name Origin
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Gold from old English word geolo (yellow); Au from Latin: aurum (gold). |
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Sources
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Found in veins in the crust, with copper ore and natively. Major producers include South Africa, Canada, United States and Western Australia
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Uses
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Pure gold is too soft for ordinary use and is hardened by alloying with silver, copper, and other metals. These alloys are mostly used in jewellery and coinage.
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White gold (an alloy of gold with platinum, palladium, nickel, and/or zinc) serves as a substitute for solid platinum.
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Gold is used in restorative dentistry especially in tooth restorations such as crowns and permanent bridges as its slight
maliablity makes a superior molar mating surface to other teeth, unlike a harder ceramic crown.
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Notes
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It is the most malleable and ductile metal known; a single gram can be beaten into a sheet of one square meter, or an ounce
into 300 square feet.
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Supposedly around half of the world's supply of gold is stored in the United States Treasury Department's gold depository
in Fort Knox Kentucky, which is considered to be one of the most secure buildings in the world.
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Because gold is traded like currencies, it has it's own ISO currency code, XAU (USD = US dollars, GBP = GB Pounds sterling
etc.).
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At the end of 2001, it was estimated that all the gold ever mined totalled only 145,000 tonnes. |