Why is gold so valuable?

Emil · Sep 15, 2010

http://www.utilisegold.com/

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rcscwc · Sep 16, 2010

skaught said: ↑

Ok so follow up questions, and hypothetical situation.

Lets say, for the sake of argument, that we find a massive amount of gold somewhere, maybe under Antarctica or, on another planet, or wherever. Somewhere easy to access. And I mean massive amounts. How would this change things for us?
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It might reduce the price of gold, but not the desirability. Gold will still be universal convertible currency.

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rcscwc · Sep 16, 2010

Fraggle Rocker said: ↑

The noble gases are even more "noble": Helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and radon. Their outer electron shell is full so they don't react with anything.It's because you don't live in the Stone Age. Humans didn't discover the technology for smelting ore until about 3000BCE, so we had no metal.

We were continually increasing the temperature of our fires in order to make sturdier and prettier pottery, so what probably happened is that one of the rocks in the fire pit had some ore in it, and it began to melt. Gold and copper have two of the lowest melting points of all metals (someone else can look up the details for me), so naturally those were the two metals that we began working first. Copper is fairly sturdy and useful for making containers and other utilitarian artifacts, but it tarnishes (oxidizes) readily. Gold, on the other hand, is fairly non-reactive so it retains its sheen, and it's very soft to work. So gold was the first "precious" metal to be used for making jewelry.

Eventually tin was discovered, which is almost as easy to smelt and work with as copper, and someone had the bright idea (or perhaps it was one of history's fortuitous accidents) of mixing liquid copper and tin together, and presto, they had invented the alloy, bronze. Bronze is stronger than either of its components, and can be worked into a wide variety of shapes, including weapons. Spears, knives, axes, clubs and arrows are pretty good for one-on-one combat; but a strong fellow wearing a suit of bronze armor and armed with a bronze sword suddenly became the first weapon of mass destruction and ushered in the era of war as we know it. (This condensed version of history contains a lot of shortcuts, so don't use it as a source of information for a homework assignment.
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Meanwhile other precious metals were discovered, i.e., silver and platinum. There was just nothing like them. They are pretty, do not tarnish badly, polish easily, and can be worked into a variety of decorative shapes for jewelry or larger ornamentation. Gold, silver and platinum jewelry last literally forever, unless destroyed deliberately or by a major catastrophe. (The European conquerors of the Inca civilization deliberately melted down almost all of their art objects and shipped them home as ingots, in order to destroy what they considered "heathen blasphemy.")

There is still nothing like gold, silver and platinum. They are still the standard materials for making jewelry. But of the three, gold is prettiest because it has color, so it's considered the most precious.

Sure, gold has industrial applications and so does platinum, and that has some effect on their price. In fact the price of platinum is now more-or-less on par with gold. But it's their decorative value that makes them expensive, not their utilitarian value.You don't understand how important it was to be able to "make things look pretty" five thousand years ago. They didn't have the paints, dyes and inks we have. Their art was done with chalk, which doesn't stand up to wear and weather; only the stuff safely sequestered on cave walls has survived. By our standards their lives were drab and colorless, and gold was an astounding discovery; there was literally nothing to compare to it. It was rare and highly desirable; that kept its value stable. On top of that, it was dense enough that a fairly small amount represented considerable value, and soft enough to divide up into pieces of any desired weight. It was the perfect substance to use for currency.

All of those things are still true about gold. It was still used as currency less than a hundred years ago. Fort Knox is still full of gold ingots that back up the paper currency of the United States. (In business classes we learned that you only need a small percentage of your money supply locked in a safe in order for people to maintain their faith in the system in normal times; that's one manifestation of the "Multiplier Effect.")

We progressed from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age and now practically everything is made of plastic, but gold is still with us and we still love it.
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Wonder if it is attraction and desirability of gold we are talking or enquiring into history. Should posted in history or somewhere.

Anyway, it is sceintifically non sense to compare gold with inert gases, no longer called noble gases.

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Captain Kremmen · Sep 16, 2010

Will people stop suggesting other sections to put this in.
Chemistry gets little enough attention as it is.

Cifo · Sep 16, 2010

joepistole said: ↑

Gold is a rare metal and a pretty metal making it perfect for coveting. Humans want something rare that few others have as a way of differenitating themselves from others.
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And, known since prehistoric times, its malleability allows humans to give it form, most likely not functional (not as arrowheads, fishhooks, knife blades, etc) due to its softness, but symbolically. This indicates its use to record/represent visual experiences in the world of humans: favored prey animals, the sun, human figures, faces, etc.

Gold's noble properties makes it non-allergenic which adds to its usefulness as jewelry or ornamentation.

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Why is gold so valuable?

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