Anna Division 3 MST Element project April 16, 2020

THE SHINY ELEMENT OF

Gold, the name meaning “shining dawn” originating from Latin, is one of those metals that everyone knows (Royal​ Society). It's a shiny yellow metal that has been a symbol of wealth ​ for hundreds of years. Gold was one of the first metals to be found; different groups of people discovered gold, from as far back as the prehistoric times. One of the first groups to mine gold were the Egyptians in 2000 BCE (Royal​ Society). ​ Most gold is found and mined in South Africa or Russia, and storied in bars. Throughout history, gold has been used for both jewelry and decoration and currency (Royal​ Society). During ​ the Roman Empire, Emperor Augustus established one pound of gold can be created into 45 individual coins, which led to the first instance of gold coins (Amadeo). After Emperor

Augustus, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus announced the amount of gold coins per a pound bar was to be 50 coins. Though in later years, as different emperors came into power, they changed the amount of coins per pound of gold. Ultimately, this led to the value of the coins to be less and less (Amadeo).

And not just the Roman Empire used gold as a form of currency, so did many other nations, though some in later years. Britain started to use gold as a form of money in 1257 and the United States of America used Britain’s gold standard until 1791 when they changed to their own gold standard(Amadeo). Gold was used a lot to create jewelry, because of its softness and easy ability to alloy with other metals, as well as decorations in history and it is still widely used as a way to create necklaces, bracelets and such. “Humans have been decorating themselves with gold since at least

4000 B.C…” One instance of this is a strand of gold found on a corpse of a woman dating back to the stone age. There was also a chariot of gold found near the burial of a Chinese King

(Pappas, “A Guide to Gold). Often to create the jewelry and decorations the gold can be beaten into thin sheets to form gold leaf (Royal​ Society). ​ Gold is positioned on the as 79, next to platinum (78) and (80), as a transition metal. The symbol to represent gold is “Au” which comes from the Latin “Aurum”

(Royal​ Society). The Atomic weight of this soft metal is 196.9 units and the density, 19.3 g/cubic ​ centimeters (Periodic table, Royal​ Society). At 20ºC, gold is a solid, but starts to boil when ​ temperatures reach 2836°C, which can not be caused by Earth's natural temperatures. If the boiling point is reached, the metal will have melted way before that at only 1064.18°C. Gold cannot be dissolved unless placed in “aqua regia” which is a mix of the nitric and hydrochloric acids (Royal​ Society). “Aqua Regia '' is actually the only thing capable of dissolving gold, which ​ is why it's called ‘royal water’ (Periodic Videos). This metal is also a good electrical conductor

(“Gold Properties”).

Though gold is pretty cool in all other areas, it's not the most interesting when it comes to its chemical properties, even though it has three different charges (+1, +2, +3 )​ the​ reason behind the three charges is because gold is a transition metal (“Gold Properties”). It's chemically unreactive and it’s most common binding partner is , which forms Auric Chloride (Royal​ Society, “Gold properties). The orbital configuration of gold, which shows where all 79 protons ​ are around the shell, is:

14 10 1 [Xe] 5s2 4f​ ​ 5d​ ​ 6s​

The reason for the ‘[Xe]” is, since the gold configuration is just an add on to the configuration of

Xenon, one can just start with so the entire super long configuration doesn’t need to be written out (Periodic Table).

In the end though, gold is still a very interesting and cool element, both in its properties and in its appearance.

Works Cited

“A Guide to Gold Jewelry: 14, 18, 22, or 24 Karat Gold?” Brinkers​ Jewelry. 2020. Web. May 2, ​ 2020.

Amadeo, Kimberly. “Gold Price History: Complete History.” The​ Balance. March 12, 2020. ​ Web. April 29 2020.

“Gold Properties: What are the Properties of Gold?” Elemental​ Matter. 2018. Web. ​ April 29 2020.

Pappas, Stephanie. “Facts about Gold.” Live​ Science. April 15, 2016. Web. April 29 2020. ​

Periodic Table. Print. April 29 2020

“Periodic Table.” Royal​ Society of Chemistry. 2020. Web. April 29 2020. ​

Periodic Videos. “Aqua Regia dissolves Gold.” Online video clip. Youtube. January 11, 2010. Video. May 2, 2020.