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"There can be no other criterion, no other standard than gold. Yes, gold which never changes, which can be shaped into ingots, bars, coins, which has no nationality and which is eternally and universally accepted as the unalterable fiduciary value par excellence."- |
Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men. Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD), Epistles
Element 79 is gold, a substance known since prehistoric times due to its incorruptibility (chemically unreactive with other elements) allowing it to be found in its natural state, as nuggets or grains, on the earth and in river silt.
Placer mining makes use of alluvial deposits made by rivers, the water flow having eroded the gold out of the original mineral vein.
Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79) described three basic types of gold mining:
"Gold in our part of the world ... is found in three ways: first, in river deposits. ... No gold is more refined, for it is thoroughly polished by the very flow of the stream and by wear. The other methods are to mine it in excavated shafts or to look for it in the debris of undermined mountains."
"[Gold] alone of all substances loses nothing on heating and survives even conflagrations and the funeral pyre. In fact the oftener it is heated the better... The best proof of its purity is a high melting point. It is strange, too, that a substance subdued by charcoal, made from the most fiercely-burning wood, is swiftly heated by the chaff, and... is fused with lead to purify it...
Another reason for holding gold in esteem is that it is least worn away by use... Again, nothing can be beaten into thinner leaves, nor divided more finely... Above all, it alone is found in nuggets of fine dust...
Finally, neither rust nor verdigris can waste its excellence or diminish its weight. Again, brine and vinegar, the conquerors of matter, make no impression on it."
Gold's chemical symbol, Au, is based its Latin word, "aurum".
Although it doesn't normally react chemically, it can however be dissolved in aqua regia, which is a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids, as well as by solutions containing chlorine (including swimming pool chemicals!), bromine, thiosulphates or cyanides.
It can also form an amalgam with mercury, which can be used to extract gold present in small amounts in crushed ore rock, but creates a serious hazard when toxic mercury is released into the environment.
It can be beaten into very thin sheets (gold leaf) which can be used to create golden lettering, and cover the surface of architectural decorations.
Pairs of gold leaf electrodes can be used in the gold-leaf electroscope, invented by Englishman Abraham Bennet in 1786 and used by L. Benoist in 1896 to make ionization measurements, and by Roentgen to detect X-Rays.
Gold is pleasing to the eye, and being resistant to corrosion and highly malleable, it is an ideal substance for manufacturing jewellery and adornments. In ancient times, the rich and powerful would demonstrate their wealth by the possession of large amounts of gold adornments, such as torcs, and utensils for serving such as goblets. Gold was always in possession, and would travel with its owner. Today, gold for wealth investment tends to be stored in vaults by banks or companies at one remove from its owner, or even traded by means of paper contracts or derivatives which expose their owner to the solvency and trustworthiness of the issuer, at odds with the fundamental properties of investment gold.
The ancient philosopher Pinder once wrote, "Gold is the child of Zeus, neither moth nor rust can devoureth it".
Gold is also a metal of the modern industrial world.
The electronics industry uses gold in electronic devices as a plating to protect the contacts of switches and relays from corrosion and hence give them longer life.
It is also very appropriate for making the bonding wire connections between integrated circuits in silicon chips, which must be protected from the dirt and chemicals present in normal environments, and the pins in their protective encapsulation that allow them to be soldered and connected to externally.
Such bonding wires are required to be 99.999% pure, and typically have diameters of one one-hundredth of a millimeter, whereas the purest bullion gold may only be 99.9 or 99.99% pure; some gold coins such as Krugerrands are alloyed with copper to make them harder and more durable for circulation, although when one buys a 1 ounce Krugerrand, the amount of gold will be 1 ounce, while the copper alloyed with it is extra.
Gold, minted into coins, or moulded into small bars, provides a convenient way for individual investors to save wealth in a form immune from the depredations of paper money inflation and the breakdown of economic systems.
"When gold argues the cause, eloquence is impotent."--Publilius Syrus
In the fifth century B.C., Democritus hypothesized that all matter is composed of tiny indestructible units, called atoms.
Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics, used gold to demonstrate that the atom has a tiny, massive nucleus.
Rutherford's gold foil experiment beamed alpha particles through gold foil and detected them as flashes of light or scintillations on a screen.
The gold foil was only 0.00004 centimeter thick, which is merely a few hundreds of atoms thick. Most alpha particles were observed to pass straight through the gold foil. A few, however, were scattered at large angles, and some even bounced back toward the source. Only a positively charged and relatively heavy target particle, such as the proposed nucleus, could account for such strong repulsion.
There is in fact a huge quantity of gold in the seas, amounting to about 1-4 grams per 1,000,000 tonnes of seawater. It has never yet been possible to extract this gold at anything like the cost of production of gold extracted from land-based mines.
The following pictures show the Superpit open-cast gold mine at Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Western Australia, operated by Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines Pty Ltd (KCGM). This pit is approximately 3.3km long, 1.2km wide and 320 metres deep, and will grow to be approximately 3.8km long, 1.35km wide and 500 metres in depth and will last until approximately 2017.
I took these pictures in August 2004, at night using a 1 second exposure on Kodak ASA-400 film, with a Praktica SLR camera.
The Superpit sits in the region known as the "Golden Mile" and has produced 50 million ounces since Paddy Hannan, Dan Shea, and Tom Flanagan discovered gold in the region in 1893.
This huge open-pit mine uses a fleet of three 650 tonne Komatsu PC 8000 hydraulic shovels, capable of moving 60 tonnes of material in their bucket in one pass, which load 31 Caterpillar 793 haul trucks capable of carrying 225 tonnes, which for ore graded at 2 grams per tonne, corresponds to 450 to 500 grams of gold per truck load (about the size of a golf ball).
The Cat 793 is 12.9 metres long, 13.2 metres high with body raised, 6.9 metres wide, and weighs 384000 kg / 846000 lb (2.6 times as long, 3.6 times as wide, and 157 times as heavy as a Toyota Landcruiser).
It is very difficult to envisage the huge scale of the operation shown in these pictures- try to imagine the dimensions of the Cat 793 trucks that are moving ore out of the mine!
Superpit 1 |
Superpit 2 |
The following pictures are from the Perth Mint, Hay Street, Perth, Western Australia, which you can visit and see attractions including a demonstration of molten gold being poured to make a 200 ounce bar, coins and medallions being struck, a large collection of natural gold nuggets, collections of coins and medals, and of course a gift shop.
The Mint's melting house began operations in 1899, and ceased in 1990, when refining was moved to a new facility near Perth International Airport. 2596 tonnes of gold have passed through the melting house, some of which is still embedded in the walls!
The Perth Mint is Australia's oldest operating mint, opened in 1899, then as a branch of Britain's Royal Mint. It was transferred to the Government of the State of Western Australia in 1970, and today is Australia's biggest gold refiner, refining about 60% of Australia's yearly gold production.
The Strike is a statue outside the front of the building dedicated to pioneer prospectors Paddy Hannan, Dan Shea, and Tom Flanagan.
The Prospector's Tent shows how a gold prospector would have lived in the bush in the
early days of prospecting in Western Australia in a 19th Century prospectors' camp.
The Strike |
Prospector's Tent |
Updated Aug 22, 2004.
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This page was first created on Aug 22, 2004