What Makes Gold Precious?

Gold is a chemical element. Its name is derived from the Latin word Aurum. On the periodic table, it is assigned with atomic number 79. Considered as one of the most valuable and sought-after metal for many years, gold has been widely used as the base of popular jewelry and precious stones.

Gold can be obtained as nuggets or as grains in rocks and alluvial deposits. Gold is a soft, dense, shiny, malleable, and ductile material. Pure gold has a bright yellow shade and is very attractive. Aside from jewelry, gold is used in different modern industries such as electronics, dentistry, and many others.

Gold has good resistance in oxidative corrosion and is a transition metal. As a chemical, it rarely reacts with substances, although it may tarnish with fluorine, chlorine, cyanide, and aqua regia. Gold can be dissolved by mercury too. These are the elements that shouldn't be placed near gold jewelry or the results won't be good.

Gold has been used in making fine quality and valuable jewelry even in the ancient times. The altering hardness, melting point, color, and ductility of gold make it easy for use in jewelry making. From its pure form which is 24k, gold can be alloyed with other metals to lower its karats and make it harder. Gold is commercially sold in 22, 18, 14, or 10 karats.

Lower karats means there is a higher percentage of copper, silver, or other base metals in the alloy. However, copper is the element most used in alloying gold because of its reddish color. It is also possible to create different colors of gold using a variety of metal-based alloys. Blue gold, purple gold, green-gold, and white-gold can all be produced by adding a certain type of metal to gold. Blue gold is made by alloying iron. Purple gold can be obtained by using aluminum. When silver is added to gold, green gold may be produced. White gold is a combination of many elements such as nickel, zinc, and copper.