Gold [Au] (CAS-ID: 7440-57-5) locate me
An: 79 N: 118 Am: 196.96655
Group No: 11  Group Name: Coinage metal
Block: d-block  Period: 6
State: solid at 298 K
Colour: gold (!) Classification: Metallic
Boiling Point: 3129K (2856'C)
Melting Point: 1337.33K (1064.18'C)
Density: 19.3g/cm3
Shell Structure diagram | Atomic Radius diagram
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Discovery Information
Who: Known to the ancients.
Name Origin
Gold from old English word geolo (yellow); Au from Latin: aurum (gold).
Sources
Found in veins in the crust, with copper ore and natively. Major producers include South Africa, Canada, United States and Western Australia
Uses
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.
White gold (an alloy of gold with platinum, palladium, nickel, and/or zinc) serves as a substitute for solid platinum.
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.
Notes
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.
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.
Because gold is traded like currencies, it has it's own ISO currency code, XAU (USD = US dollars, GBP = GB Pounds sterling etc.).
At the end of 2001, it was estimated that all the gold ever mined totalled only 145,000 tonnes.
Images
Gold ore Gold ore
A Gold bar A Gold bar