Gold is such a metal that brings
greed into the mind of a man just by loking it, I wish I had a lot of gold
too. A woman's makeup is incomplete without gold ornaments. Being the
largest element source used in ornament manufacturing in the world, the price
of gold is increasing continuously. The economy of a country can be
assessed by the availability of gold stock in that country. Gold is the
only bright metal that appears yellow in colour, no other metal present in the world appears golden colour rather than gold, if it were there, it would have
looked golden due to the oxidation of that metal. Today we will talk about
some gold facts about this golden shining metal.
- The word gold is derived
from the European word 'ghol' which means yellow or bright. The
chemical symbol of gold is Au, which is derived from the Latin word aurum and
that means shining dawn. Aurora was the goddess of the Roman dawn and
the word Aurum was coined after her name. In 50 BC, gold coins were
introduced in Rome called Aureus.
- The oldest gold item ever
found has been found in Bulgaria. Investigations have revealed that
this item is 6500 years old and humans have been making gold jewellery and
accessories since that time.
- Gold was not always on
earth, that means whatever gold is present on earth today, it has come
from some other planet through space. Historians believe that gold
has come here only by a meteorite that fell on the earth 200 million years
ago.
- Gold is the only metal
that is present on every continent of the world. This means that gold
mines and reserves are present on all continents.
- The ancient people of
Greece believed that gold was a dense mixture of water and the sun rays.
- Do you know that oceans
are the largest source of gold on earth? Millions of tonnes of gold
reserves are present at the bottom of the ocean, but we do not have any
effective technology to dig them out.
- According to an estimate,
there is so much gold in the ocean that if it is taken out, then every
person living on the earth can be given 4 kilograms of gold.
- Gold is an extremely rare
metal on earth. Till date, only 1,52,000 tonnes of gold has been
extracted from the mines. Whereas every year 907 million tonnes of
iron is extracted from the mines. That is, the amount of gold has
been extracted from the earth so far, that much iron is extracted every
hour.
- There is only that much
gold extracted in the whole world to fill the 3 Olympic swimming pools.
- There was a time in
history when aluminum was considered to be the most expensive
metal. Only the rich and wealthy used to eat food in aluminium
utensils while those poorer than them used gold utensils.
- The world's largest gold
stock is in America. About 94 million bars of gold are kept in the
five-storey underground building of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,
USA, and this amount is 25% of the gold reserve of the whole
world. Most of this gold belongs to foreign governments.
- Gold is a very good
conductor of electricity and heat, so gold wire is used to make
connections inside many complex electronic devices. Many connections
have been made in the phone of Apple company with gold wire.
- A tonne of Apple's mobile
phone contains 300 times more gold than a tonne of gold ore.
- The melting point of gold
is 1128 degree centigrade i.e. upon reaching this temperature gold starts
melting.
- Do you know that gold
never rusts? The reason for this is that gold comes under the
category of noble metals, which do not form a layer of metal oxide when
exposed to air. This is the reason that wearing gold jewellery does
not cause skin related problems. If gold jewellery is causing skin
problems, then some other metal (nickel or silver) must have been mixed in
that gold.
- Even if you eat gold, it
will not harm to your body. Yes! you can eat gold, it will not harm as
long as you eat too much gold or eat hot molten gold. Gold is added
to tea, coffee and fruits in many Asian countries.
- You would be surprised to
know that there is gold in your body too. A normal human body of 70
kg contains about 0.2 mg of gold, that too in the dissolved state.
- The gold present in our
body is very important for our health, it plays an important role in
strengthening the joints of the body and not only this, gold also works to
transmit electrical signals throughout our body.
- The purity of gold is
measured in carats. The word "carat" comes from the
"carab seed", which was the standard unit for weighing small
amounts in the Middle East. 24-karat gold means 100% pure gold, while
10-karat gold means 41.7% pure gold.
- Gold is so malleable that
a piece of gold can be turned into a sewing thread. One ounce (28.34
grams) of gold can make a thread 50 miles long.
- Pure gold is so soft and
malleable that it can be bent by hand. One ounce of gold can be
beaten to make a sheet of 100 square feet.
- According to some
reports, there is so much gold in the womb of the earth that it can wrap
the whole earth by making a sheet 1.5 feet thick.
- Even though gold is so
precious, but digging for gold is difficult as well as harmful to the
environment. Chemicals such as lead, acid, borax, cyanide and lime
are used in gold mining and refining. This process also requires a
lot of electricity.
- Most of the world's gold
mines are in South Africa, where their condition is not good. To
extract gold, ore is extracted from 12000 feet inside the earth, where the
temperature reaches up to 55 degree centigrade. Mining just one ounce
of gold requires 1,400 gallons (5299 liters) of water, 38 hours of effort,
and enough electricity to power a large house for 10 days in a row.
- The glass used in the
helmet of the astronaut going to space is also covered with a thin layer
of gold. Its layer thickness is 0.05 micrometers, it is so thin that
astronauts do not have trouble seeing through the mirror. This layer
is applied to the glass to protect it from the damage caused by the sun
rays.
- In the Olympics held till
1912 AD, gold medals were made of pure gold. But since then only 6
grams of gold is in the gold medal, the rest 92% is silver, the medal of gold
plated on top of the silver.
- Chemists in ancient Rome,
Egypt and Greece believed that ordinary objects such as iron or lead could
be turned into gold.
- In 2010, the world's
first vending machine was installed in Abu Dhabi from which gold can be
bought. The gold plate itself was plated on this machine and the
price of gold keeps changing automatically in this machine according to
the price of the market. Gold bars can be bought easily by inserting
a card or money into this machine.
- You will be surprised to
hear that some amount of gold is also found in the leaves of Eucalyptus.
- By wearing a gold ring
all the time, 6 milligrams of gold gets reduced from it every year.
- Chemist Hennig Brand believed
that there is gold in human urine and it can be removed because urine
looks like gold. By boiling and cleaning about 4000 liters of urine,
he could not find gold, but he discovered phosphorus.
- Mansa Musa of Egypt, who
is considered to be the richest person ever in history, had so much gold
of his own that he ruined the economy of his country by dropping the price
of gold.
- In ancient Egypt, gold
was believed to be the skin and flesh of the god and in particular that of
the Sun God Ra. At that time only pharaohs, priests and members of
the royal family of Egypt had the right to hold gold.
- Earlier in the Olympics,
gold medals were given in different categories such as architecture, city
planning, literature, sculpture and statistics. The founder of the
modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin himself won the gold medal in
literature at the 1912 Olympics.
- The Hungarian chemist
George de Hevesy melted the gold Nobel Prizes of German physicists Max von
Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925) to save them from the Nazis. When
the war was over, the molten gold was recast into the Nobel Prize and again
given to them.
- The ice cream tasters in
the company use a gold spoon for tasting the ice cream as the taste would
be different from using any other metal spoon. Source
- It is commonly seen that
seafarers wear gold earrings so that if ever they die and their body is
washed ashore, then any person can perform the last rites properly in
exchange for those gold earrings. Source
- Pirates believed that
wearing gold earrings would keep their eyes healthy.
- According to a report,
Indian women hold 11% of the total gold in the world. Accordingly, they
have 15000 tonnes of gold while the Indian government has only 360 tonnes
of gold.
- Most of the reserves of
gold and platinum are present in the womb of the earth and they are found
in very small quantities on the surface of the earth. The reason for
this is that when the planet Earth was in a molten state, these metals
sank and reached at the bottom. Source
- If gold is injected into
the human body by injection, it helps in fighting cancer and also makes
the joints strong. But this recipe affects only 7 out of 10 persons.
- There is such a medicine
in the market which if ingested then human excreta starts to look like
gold. But it costs a lot, $275. Source
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