So osmium - which apparently comes to earth via meteorites - gets the axe. This lets him cross off a lot of the boxes near the top of the table, because the elements clustered there tend to be more abundant.Īt the same time, you don't want to pick an element that's too rare. Now Sanat adds a new requirement: You want the thing you pick to be rare. So we're down from 118 elements to 30, and we've come up with a list of three key requirements: They're always broken out separately from the main table, and they have some great names - promethium, einsteinium.īut it turns out they're radioactive - put some einsteinium in your pocket, and a year later, you'll be dead. Then we ask him about those two weird rows at the bottom of the table. ![]() So Sanat crosses out another 38 elements, because they're too reactive. But sometimes they corrode, start to fall apart. And it turns out that a lot of the elements in the periodic table are pretty reactive. In fact, you don't want your money undergoing any kind of spontaneous chemical reactions. Money that spontaneously bursts into flames is clearly a bad idea. "If you expose lithium to air, it will cause a huge fire that can burn through concrete walls," he says. Then he swings over to the far left-hand column, and points to one of the elements there: Lithium So Sanat crosses out the right-hand column. You could put all your gaseous money in a jar, but if you opened the jar, you'd be broke. They're chemically stable.īut there's also a big drawback: They're gases. The elements there have a really appealing characteristic: They're not going to change. Sanat starts with the far-right column of the table. Each square has a different element in it - one for carbon, another for gold, and so on. The periodic table looks kind of like a bingo card. We asked him to take the periodic table, and start eliminating anything that wouldn't work as money. We went to an expert to find out: Sanat Kumar, a chemical engineer at Columbia University. Why gold? Why not osmium, lithium, or ruthenium? Gold has been used as money for millennia, and its price has been going through the roof. And yet, for thousands of years, humans have really, really liked one of them in particular: gold. Chlorauric acid (HAuCl 4) is used to preserve photographs by replacing the silver atoms present in an image.The periodic table lists 118 different chemical elements. Gold sodium thiosulfate (AuNa 3O 6S 4) is used as a treatment for arthritis. Gold coated mirrors can be used to make telescopes that are sensitive to infrared light.Ī radioactive isotope of gold, gold-198, is used for treating cancer. Gold is also a good reflector of infrared radiation and can be used to help shield spacecraft and skyscrapers from the sun's heat. Gold is a good conductor of heat and electricity and does not tarnish when it is exposed to the air, so it can be used to make electrical connectors and printed circuit boards. One karat is equal to one part in twenty-four, so an 18 karat gold ring contains 18 parts pure gold and 6 parts alloy material. The amount of gold in an alloy is measured with a unit called a karat. Gold alloys are used to make jewelry, decorative items, dental fillings and coins. Pure gold is soft and is usually alloyed with other metals, such as silver, copper, platinum or palladium, to increase its strength. One sheet of gold leaf can be as thin as 0.000127 millimeters, or about 400 times thinner than a human hair. Thin sheets of gold, known as gold leaf, are primarily used in arts and crafts for gilding. A single ounce of gold can be beaten into a sheet measuring roughly 5 meters on a side. Gold is the most malleable and ductile of all known metals. It has been estimated that all of the gold that has currently been refined could be placed in a cube measuring 20 meters on a side. ![]() There is roughly 1 milligram of gold dissolved in every ton of seawater, although extracting it currently costs more than the gold is worth. ![]() Gold is sometimes found free in nature but it is usually found in conjunction with silver, quartz (SiO 2), calcite (CaCO 3), lead, tellurium, zinc or copper. An attractive and highly valued metal, gold has been known for at least 5500 years.
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