Gold

Gold Nuggets

Gold has an atomic number or 79, it symbol is Au. It is located in group 11 period 6 and is one of the transition metals. It has an atomic mass 196.9665, and it’s electron configuration [Xe]4f145d106s1. It is a solid a room temperature; it has a melting point of 1064.18 degrees Celsius and a boiling point of 2836 degrees Celsius. Visually it is a shiny metallic deep yellow colored metal. It’s electronegativity by the Pauling scale is 2.4. Gold has been a part of the live of humans for centuries, since its discovery believed to be around 3000B.C. we humans have lusted after it, it causes a more primitive man to come out for it making t worth more than you can really use it for. It is currently at the moment I am writing this 38.53 in U.S. dollars per gram, this price changes constantly only because it looks pretty because we say it looks pretty. Humans have had gold too long for there to be a set founder; it was discovered in ancient times all over the world. Some of the first coins in history from 2500 years ago were made of gold. Currently we can trace gold about 6200 years ago in Bulgaria, though pure gold it known to be very soft, soft enough for you to squish in your hand. So it is likely that pure gold may have been discovered earlier by humans, but is lost due to its weak properties. Now if you don’t already know it people wanting to get rich and make a living for themselves with gold was earlier than the California gold rush. There was a time where it was believed that one could make gold from any other metal; they just needed the night components. These were the day of
alchemy where people of usually extremely rich stature that really had a small understanding of chemistry, invested in some cases all of the money their families had, and they all had one common goal: to make gold as easily as one could make bread.

Ancient Alchemist would have had a workshop much like this one

For years ancient alchemist have been mixing all kinds of compound and pure elements, building the basic building blocks for modern chemistry. It was common knowledge at the time that there were 4 elements; Fire, Earth, Air, and water. By the alchemist reasoning everything on the earth was composed of these elements. Therefore you should be able to make anything out for the right combination of stuff right? To them yes, and that is exactly what they did, they
would all different names and explanations for the compounds of the world, all explained by their belief in the 4 elements. They wanted to make nothing more than gold, gold was on every alchemist mind, they thought if they could figure out how to make gold they could get extremely rich. They thought gold was a perfect mixture of mercury and sulfur in it perfect proportions. Of course it never worked, and these proportions were never discovered because they didn’t exist. But all of their hard work had given us some cool stuff, they developed tools and techniques such as the Pestle and Mortar, and they got a long way for putting poop over fire, and I mean that literally.