Gold

Gold is a soft, dense, bright yellow metal. It is a chemical element. Its chemical symbol is Au. Its atomic number is 79. As a precious metal, it has been used for many thousands of years by people all over the world, for jewelry, and as money. It is easy to shape. This means, it can be hammered into sheets or stretched into wires without breaking. Chemically, gold is a noble metal. This means it barely reacts with anything. Only platinum is less reactive.

Gold is tough. It does not dissolve in most acids. But, if you mix nitric acid and hydrochloric acid together, a combo called aqua regia, gold will dissolve. When it does, it forms a solution called tetrachloroaurate, which is just gold floating in a liquid in a special way. Interestingly, nitric acid alone cannot dissolve gold, even though it will dissolve metals like silver. That is why people long ago could test for real gold using acid—it became known as the “acid test.” Gold can also dissolve in cyanide solutions, which is how miners extract it from rocks. It can also mix with mercury, forming something called an amalgam. In the mercury case, gold does not really react, it just mixes in like sugar dissolving in water.

Gold is important because it is rare, but also easier to use than other rare metals. It is also used to repair and replace teeth and in electronic equipment such as computers. Even some medicines like auranofin, has gold, and is used to treat arthritis. It has been used for coins, jewelry, and art.

For a long time, money was tied to gold through the gold standard, though that ended in 1971. The color of this metal is also called gold. Gold is so valued that the discovery of a new place to mine has sometimes caused a gold rush. The deepest workplaces for miners in the world are in South Africa n gold mines 4 km (2.5 miles) down.

Often, gold is found as a native metal. This means it is not part of an ore, lying around in nature, as nuggets or tiny grains in rocks, or riverbeds. It could be mixed with other metals like silver (called electrum), copper, or even platinum. Sometimes it is trapped inside minerals like pyrite or combined with tellurium in rare compounds. Most of the gold on Earth is deep inside the Earth’s core because it is dense, sinking there. Nearly all discovered gold was brought to the surface by meteorites.

In 2023, China produced the most gold, followed by Russia and Australia. 2020, a total of around 201,296 tonnes of gold exist above ground. All the gold ever mined could fit in a cube about 21.7 meters (71 ft) on each side. Around half of new gold goes to jewelry, 40% to investments, and 10% to industry.

Properties

In chemistry, gold is chemical element 79, a transition metal in Group 11. It has an atomic weight of 199.966 a.m.u. Its symbol is Au, from the Latin word for gold, aurum. It is a “noble metal” meaning it has low chemical reactivity. It will, however, react with aqua regia (a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid) to form chloroauric acid. Gold has only one stable isotope, 197 Au. All other isotopes are radioactive and do not occur naturally. Most of them decay to mercury, platinum, or iridium.

Gold is very soft. It is malleable, meaning a goldsmith can hammer it into thin metal sheets. It is also ductile, which means it can be pulled into wire. When it is used in money or in jewelry, it is often alloyed with copper, silver, or both to make it harder.

Most metals are gray in color. Gold is yellow because of the way its electrons behave. The only other metal in common use that has a non-gray color is copper. Caesium also has a gold-like color, but it is not commonly used as a metal because it reacts with water.

Gold is a fairly good electrical conductor, better than aluminium, but not as good as copper or silver. Copper and brass electrical connectors, especially those used with computer and audio/video equipment, are often plated with gold for corrosion resistance. Connectors that are intended for soldering are not made of gold because it makes the solder joint brittle. Gold is also a good heat conductor, although it is not commonly used for this purpose due to its cost.

Origins

Gold is made in space. Scientists have found three main ways gold is made in space:

Supernova explosions
Neutron stars smashing together
Flares from magnetars, like solar flares

All three involve a process called the r-process, which makes elements heavier than iron. For a long time, people thought supernovae made most of the gold. But then in 2017, scientists saw two neutron stars smash into each other (event GW170817). They realized these collisions actually produce tons of gold, maybe most of it in the universe. Those two neutron stars smashing into each other produced, between 3 and 13 Earth masses of gold.

But neutron stars smashing into each other are rare and happen late in the universe (approximately once every 100,000 years), so they cannot explain why very old stars already have gold. That is where magnetar flares come in. These flares happened earlier and more often, sprinkling gold across the galaxy. In fact, magnetars might make 1–10% of all the heavy elements in the Milky Way.

Language and culture

A gold medal is often the given to the first-place winner in a race or other sports.

The most important international currencies of the 19th century used the gold standard.

Something that is in some way good may be given gold status.

Gold can mean that something or someone is very good or has done very well.

Safety

Gold is one of the safest elements to handle, but the chemicals used to process it can be dangerous. Metallic gold is non-toxic, which is unusual for a heavy metal. Soluble gold compounds, however, are toxic to the liver and kidneys. Gold is non-flammable, even in a pure oxygen environment or when finely powdered. It does not react with most household or laboratory chemicals. Gold is commonly processed with cyanide, which is highly toxic. Most of the cyanide is destroyed in the production process, so it is not present in the final product, but it can be a hazard to workers in a gold processing plant. Illegally mined gold is often processed with, and contaminated with mercury. Since gold conducts electricity, gold jewelry should never be worn when working with electricity.

Mining

In 2022, China mined [c. 10% or] “10.6 percent [330 tons] of global share”; Russia and Australia (each) mined 320 tons of gold.

Other information

In 2025, gold was traded

under USD 2,800 for a troy ounce, but also
[above $4,320 or at c.] 4,326

A troy ounce, is equal to 31.1034768 grams.

NOTOC

Gold is a yellow precious metal that is valued for its beauty and shine. Gold is softer than many other metals and can be formed into different shapes using simple tools and without fire or other heat. Because it can be found in clumps and is easy to work, it is believed to be the first metal that was used by humans. It has been used for making coins and jewelry for thousands of years. Today it is still used to make jewelry. Because it is a rare metal, it is a symbol of wealth. It is also used in electronic devices such as computers.

Gold may be worked into all sorts of shapes. It can be rolled into tiny shapes. It can be pulled into thin wire, which can be twisted and plaited. It can be hammered or rolled into sheets. It can be made very thin, and stuck onto other metal. It can be made so thin that it was sometimes used to decorate the hand-painted pictures in books called “illuminated manuscripts”.

Gold does not “react” with many other chemicals. This means that it does not lose its shine, or rust, or burn, or explode. When ancient gold coins or jewellery are found, they look as shiny and beautiful as the day they were made.

Gold gets its English name from the Germanic word gulþa (meaning gold). The Old English word geolu means yellow. In Latin, gold was called aurum. This is why the chemical symbol for gold is Au.

Gold is rare, which means it is difficult to find. Gold is usually found underground, where it is dug out of mines that are tunnelled deep into the earth. Gold is usually found as thin layers in rocks, but is also sometimes found in lumps. A lump of gold is called a nugget.

Gold can sometimes be found above the ground in the sand and gravel bars of streams. Flakes and grains of gold that are trapped in rock come loose as the rock is broken up by the force of the water. The water then carries the gold downstream. When the stream slows down, the gold settles along with sand and gravel. People sometimes look for loose gold in streams, or in places where streams have once flowed. This is called “prospecting”. A prospector often carries a wide pan, to scoop up the sand and gravel from the bottom of a stream and swish it around, looking for tiny flakes and nuggets of gold. This is called “gold panning”.

Gold is not dangerous. Very pure gold leaf (sometimes called “edible gold”) is safe to eat and is sometimes used to decorate food. Gold is so safe to put in your mouth that many people have false teeth and fillings made of gold. Sometimes gold has “impurities”. This means that small amounts of different elements are in the gold. The impurities in the gold may be poisonous.

Did You Know?

Gold was probably the first metal used by humans.
Gold is so soft that people used to bite gold coins to make sure they were real.
A single gram of gold can be pounded into a sheet of gold leaf covering a square meter.