Facts About Gold

metals

There are only six denser than gold are: osmium, iridium, platinum, rhenium, neptunium and plutonium.

special difficulty

Gold can be beaten without any to a thickness of 0.1 micron (0.1 μm)

metals

There are only six denser than gold are: osmium, iridium, platinum, rhenium, neptunium and plutonium.

special difficulty

Gold can be beaten without any to a thickness of 0.1 micron (0.1 μm)

Gold

is the most malleable of all metals: it can be beaten into thinner sheets than any other metal.

Ernest Rutherford

and his coworkers Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden fired alpha particles (nuclei of helium) at gold leaf.

Gold

does NOT dissolve in nitric acid, so if a metal reacts with nitric acid, it is certainly NOT .

Gold

is the most ductile of all metals: it is the most suitable for drawing into wires.

Gold is the most malleable of all metals

it can be beaten into thinner sheets than any other metal

Gold is the most ductile of all metals

it is the most suitable for drawing into wires

There are only six metals denser than gold are

osmium, iridium, platinum, rhenium, neptunium and plutonium

‘The acid test

a test whose result is absolutely certain

Gold Foil Experiment

The experiment found that alpha particles were deflected as they passed through the gold more than they ought to have been if the gold atoms were made of smoothly spread matter. 

By 1911 Rutherford had concluded that

atoms consist of a tiny, dense point of positive charge surrounded mostly by empty space in which negatively charged electrons are present.

Approximately 75 percent of the world’s gold

ends up in jewelry.

Gold does NOT dissolve in

nitric acid, so if a metal reacts with nitric acid, it is certainly NOT gold.

The ‘acid test’ became popular in the

1849 Californian gold rush, when all sorts of characters tried their hand at selling fake gold.

Ernest Rutherford and his coworkers Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden

fired alpha particles (nuclei of helium) at gold leaf.