Gold is one of the chemical elements. It’s atomic number is 79. This valuable precious metal is sought around the world. Gold is used for several different purposes like jewelry.

Where is gold found? Gold is usually found as nuggets or grains in rocks. Sometimes it is found in veins. A vein is an area within a rock that is filled with crystals.

So what are the characteristics of gold? Gold is soft, shiny, and dense. It is the most malleable metal known to man. Malleable meaning it can be hammered into really thin sheets.

Pure gold is gold that doesn’t contain any additives. It is a very bright yellow. It has a very shiny luster to it. This metal doesn’t oxidize in water or air which helps it maintain its yellow color and lustrous shine.

Pure gold is too soft for most things. In order for it to be manageable and useful you need to add metals to it. Copper is a popular metal that is mixed with gold to make it harder. But because of pure gold being mixed with other metals a measurement called the carat (k) was to created to know exactly how much of the substance was pure gold. This helped determine the mixtures value.

Some people were curious in 2006 about how much gold had been mined. They did the research and found tha 158,000 tons of gold had been brought up out of the earth by the end of 2006. That is an amazing amount of gold.

What is gold used for today? Gold has many uses in our world. One being in modern dentistry due to gold’s unique ability to resist oxidation and corrosion. It is also used in electronics for its ability to conduct electricity. Gold is an excellent quality metal.

Gold has been most known for its use as money in the past. This ended with the introduction of paper currency. The reason being that there is only so much gold in the world. Paper money can be printed without limit. The last country to use gold to back their money was Switzerland.