Talk:Gold/Archive 1

message: Hmmmm... I see the new section heading and note I added have both been deleted mere minutes later, and the cultural stuff I had started to put up is now in "history". Interesting approach, and well written. But the material I want to add is about cultural aspects of Gold now, rather than its history. I'll leave this project a while and think about it. Or would someone else like to have a go? Andrewa 23:53, 30 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Modern cultural aspects of gold 

message: "... caused by the fact that the plasmon frequency of this element lies in the visible range, which causes red and yellow light to be reflected and blue light to be absorbed."
Unless my physics is mistaken, shouldn't it reflect red and _green_ light?
:No..  It's saying that frequencies in the red-yellow area of the spectrum are reflected, and higher frequencies are absorbed..  The red/green/blue thing is biology, not physics.  Pfalstad 01:33, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colours of reflected light 

message: I wonder, why is gold considered to be valuable?  I know it looks great but is that why? I am not asking because I don't think it should be considered as such, I'm just curioous.  Jaberwocky6669 21:00, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)
:It is rare and does not degrade. --mav 07:00, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Value of gold

message: As I explained in Making Stargate a Reality in the Stargate Technical forum of Ascifi.com (Ignore that temperature; it's a calcuotypo!), gold's ductibility and malleability are exceeded by at least three other metals, at STP even.  If you look around the periodic table, you should see that for yourself without going into my essay.
Then it should read "It is one of the most malleable and ductile metals known."
Tridy 03:10, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: disputed

message: :"It is one of only three metals which have an actual easily-identifiable color; the other two are copper, which is red, and caesium, which has a gold color."
Assuming gold could be described as having a gold colour, this is probably a bad choice of words to explain how caesium is easily-identifiable, so I changed it to 'pale golden color'. http://www.cs.rochester.edu/users/faculty/nelson/cesium/cesium_color.html Moogsi 20:12, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: We describe gold as yellow, so perhaps we can describe cesium as pale yellow? --FOo 01:05, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, seeing as gold and copper are described in terms of flat colours rather than likening them to metals, that's probably a better idea. Moogsi 21:42, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Gold-colored

message: Removed the recently added subsection Gold's value versus money supply as it was a copy of the section in Gold as an investment and seemed rather much here. Seems that more of the value section could be cut also as well as the Socialism and gold section. Political rambling and money systems don't need much space here - the article is long enough already. Vsmith 22:42, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gold's value versus money supply 

message: There should be a psychology and neurobiology of gold paragraph. Does science understand how and why the brain decided gold is desirable? Is there a particular section of the human brain which can be removed, yet the guy will live but loose interest in gold and misc. shiny things like diamonds? Are animals addicted to gold (except the well known magpie)? What the about great apes?
:We like it because it is useful, rare, and pretty. HighInBC 15:30, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The most important  paragraph is missing! 

message: I don't want to edit this subject since I haven't been involved in its development. There appear to be a number of links from this subject to external sites of a purely commercial nature. Should those be removed?
:Agreed. I removed a batch of commercial links with seemingly little or no information content apart from advertizing. Restore legit. ones as you like, but justify each. Vsmith 00:39, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links Section:  Remove commercial links? 

message: I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I am really confused about alloys and the carat system.  I don't know if this should be clarified in the article, but maybe someone could tell me.  If gold is always mixed with an alloy then is 24 carat gold really pure gold?  Is is mixed with an alloy too? hdstubbs
:See Carat (purity). The answer is basically that it depends what you mean by "pure". When one says that gold is always alloyed, what this means is that it is practically impossible to remove other metals from it entirely.
:It's fully possible to get very close -- 24kt gold is also called .999 fine gold, meaning that 99.9% of the mass is elemental gold. The Canadian Gold Maple Leaf coins are made of .9999 fine gold, meanning that 99.99% of the mass is gold -- no more than one part in ten thousand is base metal. So it's correct to say that the Maple Leaf is purer than 24kt, simply because the old standard for what constitutes "pure" is lower.
:For jewelry, and for historical gold coins that actually circulated, there's a very good reason that pure gold was not used. (It isn't just because kings wanted to debase the currency -- although they did that too.) Pure gold is too soft to be practical for many purposes; a pure gold coin would wear out in actual circulation. --FOo 20:53, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confused 

message: The Symbolism section contained some fascinating information, but it also contained a few minor typos and grammatical errors. I have rewritten the section to fix these errors. I have preserved the facts as much as possible. --Caroline Sanford 09:25, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Symbolism 

message: I'm pretty sure chlorine only causes the alloy metals to corrode (like copper) but not gold itself:
http://www.daviesjewelry.com/Jewelry_tip.asp
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem03/chem03091.htm
*A terminology problem. What is commonly called "chlorine" for swimming pools, etc., isn't actually molecular chlorine, but generally a compound of chlorine like sodium hypochlorite. Chlorine gas is much more corrosive, and it will react with gold. Sodium hypochlorite is much less corrosive, and wont. --Bob Mellish 07:42, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Attacked by chlorine? 

message: This was just added to the article:
:American Indians of the Sioux tribe called it "The yellow metal that makes the white man crazy"
This is a novel claim and needs to be cited. Anyone have a verifiable source for it? --FOo 22:31, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I dunno... I remember my college English professor said that the man who transcribed Black Elk Speaks took extravagent liberties with Black Elk's actual words, and that large parts of what's attributed to Black Elk are made up.  I don't have any references for that, so I'm not going to take out the Sioux reference.  But I think we should consider taking it out.  It could be true, but it sounds a lot like one of those things that European Americans attribute to Native Americans because it sounds so wise and earthy.  --Allen 01:23, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. It seems too much like a stereotype. It's worth noting that gold was a much bigger deal in Spain's colonization of South America than in any white man's colonization of North America ... and moreover was in widespread use in pre-Columbian South America, too. --FOo 05:48, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Seconded. --Kevin Hanse  (talk) 19:17, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unsourced Sioux claim 

message: "In the software development cycle "going gold" means releasing a version that is ready for distribution to customers, rather than a buggy beta version."
Nobody in software development says this.  Pretty sure it's not even management jargon. 64.74.207.50 04:16, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's trade-rag talk. See golden master for what it's a parrotting imitation of. --FOo 04:41, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed statement 

message: Regarding the merge request of gold bar into here, okay, it's a gold product and quite notable as far as that goes. Its existence and manufacture should be mentioned, in one or two sentences. Better here than having a stub article. But before this goes into too much detail, keep in mind there also are tin bars, rubidium ingots, yttrium ingots, etc.
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Other things are equally important that aren't even mentioned. Little about gold leaf when there's a whole historical art craft based on it. Or the drawing of gold wire that is so important in electronics—about 100 tonnes of bond wire each year .pdf deserve more than a "performs critical functions" in the article. I'd rather see the image of Tutankhamun's funerary mask than of gold bars and Krugerrands.
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On the other hand, three links to gold as an investment. I'm also not interested in a whole US-centric section on their money supply. Or in speculations on the politics of Malaysia. It's utterly irrelevant to a general article to include a listing of investment stock exchanges. This article seriously has to be rebalanced, away from the money thing. Femto 18:00, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Gold as an investment is a "money thing", that's what the article is about and is called. However, I agree with you that there is no point having so much text referring to investments in the main gold article, if it is duplicated in the sub-article.  As for the gold bar article there will be merit in it as stand alone article if the content is expanded (see gold coin, for example). There are many different weights and types of gold bars, so it would be interesting for potential investors in bullion bars. The history of gold bars would also be noteworthy. --nirvana2013 11:42, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  About merge request and general cleanup 

message: This user seems to be making useless edits.  Thanks Edgar181, after I made two corrections, I was about to go back and revert it back a few, but got caught up trying to revert 217.33.74.20's Sodium edit...then looks like you beat me to it.  Thanks. therearenospoons 12:36, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  217.33.74.20 

message: (165.29.94.254 21:14, 16 February 2006 UTC)
:You probably mean the Olympic gold medals. They contain at least 6 grams of gold plating, the base is a 92.5% silver alloy, actually.  I don't believe you could legally call it a gold medal if it were jewelry. — The current nobel prize medals are 18-karat [green gold] with a 24-karat gold plating.  Tells you something about the relative importance, doesn't it? (Yes, I'm an egghead, why? :-) Femto 14:37, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And Hugh Loebner, sponser of the Loebner prize has something to say about that on his website. Carbonate 14:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  how much gold is in a gold medal? 

message: Is it really necessary to have all the various local names for gold in the History section?  I do believe it to be redundant (via interwiki links) and that it doesn't add anything to the article. dewet|™ 17:12, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  All languages? 

message: can you buy gold across the counter in Britian? i have heard that obtaining physical gold is relatively easy in european countries like germany and switzerland but i thought that it was illegal on mainland britain and to get solid gold from a bank you had to go to the channel islands or the isle of man. Mybe i am just nuts anyway a clear answer would be appreciated
:There were, in the past, restrictions on private ownership of gold in both the UK and US.  These disappeared in the 70's, AFAICT.  The World Gold Council has links on their website to businesses that buy and sell gold; the banks apparently don't do so in the UK, but there are a number of brokerages that do.  --Robert Merkel 01:19, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gold across the counter 

message: Would somebody please remove the part that says 'Gold is a noble metal' because its not--Gold /will/ interact with other elements. --71.145.151.179 00:50, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But absolute un-reactivity isn't a required property of noble metals. Femto 12:17, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Note the difference between a noble metal and a noble gas. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 19:52, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Noble metal 

message: Anyone know if gold can't tarnish, or is "tarnish resistant" like platinum? Can't find anything in the article --Fxer 22:51, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Because of its high electrical conductivity and resistance to corrosion and other desirable combinations of physical and chemical properties, gold also emerged in the late 20th century as an essential industrial metal." --From the article, emphasis mine. TimL 02:22, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

text: It may tarnish in the presence of an acid. But not in normal enviroment. I have seen gold coins being taken from a 300 year old shipwreck shining from the mud. HighInBC 15:34, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Tarnish is, as I understand it, a relatively resistant coating of a salt of the metal. For example, silver reacts with sulfur to give a tarnish of silver sulfide, that doesn't dissolve in water. Gold doesn't have such salts, as far as I know; solutions that attack it also dissolve it. Correct me if I'm wrong. It's another case if gold is mixed with other metals.  --Vuo 20:44, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gold tarnish?