Gold - Tales from the Periodic Table

Gold, the 79th element in the periodic table is one of the few elements that is not colored silver or some shade of silver. It is almost completely non-reactive chemically. It's is a member of the transition metals and part of the Noble Metals Group in the middle of the periodic table. It's rare and expensive. It's the most malleable and ductile of all the elements meaning it can be pounded into extremely thin sheets, and drawn into exquisitely fine wire. Used in jewelry, electronics, finance, and hundreds of other places, it a versatile element in spite of its cost.

[@FrankPSF]

Nice job Ron ... as always. I was going to play this in the background, but found myself glued to the screen for the entire video!

[@sydhenderson6753]

Fun story: during the 1893 gold rush in Australia (you could have done too long a video on gold rushes), Kalgoorlie was using the leftover rock from the mining to repair the streets and in building materials. It turned out it wasn't fool's gold but gold telluride (one of the few ores of gold). So the next phase of the gold rush was mining the city streets.

[@ronhipschman]

Syd, If you go back to the Tellurium epidote: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mIrQo3xuZ5KshaM You will find Kalgoorlie featured! Ron

[@Tyler.O]

Excellent video! 👍

[@ronhipschman]

Thank you very much!

[@greegearl1542]

Excellent element 79 lecture! May your skies be clear on April 8th 2024.

[@ronhipschman]

Thanks! I hope we have clear skies too. We're viewing from Torreón MX and Junction TX. Mexico have a very good weather outlook, Texas is about 50% to 60% positive. Hope we get both. Watch on the Exploratorium's website: www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse or on our channel here on KZbin. Ron

[@brfisher1123]

Also, I find it unfortunate that copper unlike gold is slowly oxidized by atmospheric oxygen as it would make a great “poor man’s gold” as it’s also a gorgeous colored metal even though it does form a gorgeous green patina when left out in the open for many years.

[@ronhipschman]

The green patina is an architectural feature! In San Francisco, the De Young museum has a Copper skin that is slowly getting its patina. Ron

[@brfisher1123]

It’s kind of sad that we’re close to saying “goodbye” to the stable elements once we get past lead (#82) but also exciting that we’re able to enter the range of some pretty cool elements like uranium! ☢️☢️☢️☢️

[@sydhenderson6753]

And the next three are deadly poisonous. I'm looking forward to bismuth, which is benign and useful. Then the deadly radioactive ones until we get to thorium.

[@ronhipschman]

Yes, we can probably do individual videos for the elements up to maybe Americium, but beyond that I may have to group them into a single (or a few) videos. Ron

[@chrisperegoy2613]

Hey Ron, on both the electrical and thermal conductivity charts you provide, copper and silver are in each other's place. Silver has the highest in both categories.

[@ronhipschman]

It just looks that way. Silver is always the top dot. The lines connecting the chemical symbol to the dot on the chart are hard to see. Maybe I need to do a bit of enhancement in Affinity Photo! Ron

[@brfisher1123]

It's astounding to think that if we were to line all 3.0574 sextillion of those atoms in that 1-gram gold bar end to end, they would stretch roughly 446.38 gigameters or roughly three times the distance from the earth to the sun!! 🤯🤯😱😱

[@ronhipschman]

Now there's some interesting calculating! Ron

[@brfisher1123]

I came back to mention that just saying "atoms are small" has been a *HUGE* understatement even though saying "atoms are seriously small" is a bit of an improvement! 😂😂😂😂 Think about this: a little one-gram gold bar for example contains approximately a whopping 3.0574x10^21 or 3.0574 *SEXTILLION* (3,057,400,000,000,000,000,000) gold atoms!!! The fact that there are sextillions of atoms in such a small object like that should give us an idea of just how *RIDICULOUSLY* small atoms truly are! 🤯🤯😱😱

[@ronhipschman]

You couldn't hear in my voice that the word "SMALL" was capitalized! Ron

[@brfisher1123]

@@ronhipschman My bad, I think there are more atoms in a 1-gram gold bar than there are stars in an average galaxy!!

[@ricoricasantos1217]

Hey Ron...What happened to Gary (AKA Frank), the Facilitator? Did he get fired?

[@bendybruce]

Why did people sometimes have gold teeth? Is it because gold is safe to ingest in the human body?

[@ronhipschman]

I don't know if people have SOLID gold teeth, but Gold crowns are very common (I have a few myself!) The Gold amalgam is nice and hard, like your teeth, and it thermally expands at the same rate as the teeth. You don't want them popping out when you drink a hot beverage! Ron

[@bicivelo]

I live in st louis and outside of the area is Eureka, Mo. whenever someone mentions Eureka I correct them by saying it’s pronounced EUREKA! And yell it out 😅

[@ronhipschman]

We also have a Eureka here in California (must be a gold-rush thing...) Ron

[@YunxiaoChu]

???

[@freightgod]

I'm no magistatistician but 480 samples of something at least sounds like it's meant to account for nonuniformity? Great video

[@ronhipschman]

True, but it must have been standardized to a specific species (I don't think there are many...). And what about water content? That could make a big difference. I want my gold in wet barley grains! Ron