Monday 14 September 2015

23 Amazing Facts About Gold

1.    If all of the existing gold in the world was pulled into a 5 micron thick wire, it could wrap around the world 11.2 million times.

2.   The boiling point of gold is 2808 degrees centigrade.

3.   There are just over 31.103 grams in a troy ounce of gold.

Largest Gold Coin


4.   The troy ounce (oz t) is a unit of imperial measure, now used for the mass of precious metals.

5.   It is difficult to find a 1 ounce nugget of gold than a five carat diamond.

6.   A gold nugget is a naturally occurring piece of native gold.

7.   The temperature of the human body is 37 degrees centigrade. Gold’s conductivity of heat means that it rapidly reaches body temperature – one of the reasons it has become valued for jewellery.

8.   Gold melts at 1064 degrees centigrade.

9.   More than 175,000 tonnes of gold has been mined since the beginning of civilisation.

10. While digging up stones to build a house, Australian miner George Harrison found gold ore near Johannesburg in 1885, beginning the South African gold rush

11. All of the gold ever mined would fit into a crate of 21 metres cubed.

12. Around half of all gold mined today is made into jewellery, which remains the single largest use for gold

13. The 40,000 miners who joined the California Gold Rush in 1849 were called “49ers”. Only a very small number of them ever got rich.

14. Over 90 per cent of the world’s gold has been mined since the California Gold Rush.

15. Gold is often alloyed with other metals to change its colour and strength. Eighteen karat gold is composed of 750 parts of pure gold per 1,000.

16. The largest gold coin ever created was cast by the Perth Mint in 2012. Weighing one tonne and measuring 80 cm in diameter, it surpassed the previous record, a 2007, C$1 million coin which was just 53 cm across.

17. One ounce of gold can be stretched to a length of 50 miles; the resulting wire would be just 5 microns wide.(1 micron=0.001 mm)

18. The largest ever true gold nugget weighted 2316 troy ounces(72,034  gms i.e, almost 72.034 kg )when found at Moliagul in Australia in 1869. It was called the “Welcome Stranger”.

19. The atomic number of gold is 79, which means there are 79 protons in the nucleus of every atom metal.

20. A “London Good Delivery Bar”, the standard unit of traded gold, is made from 400 troy ounces(12.4 kg) of gold.

21. The US Federal Reserve holds 6,700 tonnes of gold, in 530,000 gold bars. At its peak in 1973, the Fed stored more than 12,000 tonnes of monetary gold.

22. There are 147.3 million ounces – around 4,600 tonnes – of gold stored in the US Bullion Depository at Fort Knox.

23. 1 ounce of pure gold can be hammered into a single sheet 9 metres square.


Article Credit - World Gold Council


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Article By
Krupa J.S.


CAD Designer, SDI

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