In dentistry, gold combines alloys to create gold crowns. Plating contacts and gold bonding wire in electronics contain gold because of the element’s high electrical conductivity. In jewelry, it forms alloys with other metals to make the jewelry harder and thus more durable. Because of these properties, many ancient decorations, art pieces, and currencies contained gold. The element gold is a very dense, malleable, conductive, ductile, and attractive metal. Gold’s Applications in Today’s World What is gold used for? Mining companies dump the toxic wastes into natural water bodies, where they contaminate the water and have even more adverse effects on the environment. Toxic elements such as mercury and cyanide are byproducts of gold mining. Processes such as open-pit mining strip away at the land, leaving toxic wastes that are harmful to humans, plants, and animals. Gold mining is extremely destructive to the environment. It is usually found in and mined from quartz veins or placer deposits. Gold only exists in the world in its gold-197 isotope form. In nature, it is usually chemically pure or in combination with tellurium, selenium, or bismuth. Gold in the EnvironmentĪs a relatively rare element, gold’s abundance in Earth’s crust is estimated to be around 0.005 parts per million. For these reasons, gold was a form of currency and backed paper currencies internationally. It is also non-toxic and fairly nonreactive, and thus would not tarnish or rust and would still be feasible to store. Compared to other elements, gold was relatively rare in nature, but there was still a substantial amount of it for it to back currencies. In other words, the value of a dollar was based on an amount of gold, and gold could be exchanged for an amount of paper currency.īecause of its malleability, relative ease of melting, and attractiveness, gold was extremely valuable and was a form of currency in ancient civilizations. Until 1933, the United States used the gold standard, in which gold backed the paper currency. The gold atom has an electron configuration of 4f 14 5d 10 6s 1 The Gold Standard Silver and copper are also in group 11, although gold is not that similar to them chemically. It is a very nonreactive transition metal in group 11, period 6, with 1 valence electron. It is located in the d-block on the periodic table, with platinum to its left and mercury on its right. Gold, symbol Au, has an atomic number of 79.
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