Gold Tips
Keep gold jewelry in a clean dry place. Keep various items of gold jewelry separate, as this will prevent scratching. Remove your gold jewelry before washing with soap as soap forms a film on gold making it dull and lifeless. Remove your jewelry before applying perfume and make-up.
Gold is a rare metallic element with a melting point of 1064 degrees centigrade and a boiling point of 2808 degrees centigrade. Its chemical symbol, Au, is short for the Latin word for gold, ‘Aurum’, which literally means ‘Glowing Dawn’. It has several properties that have made it very useful to mankind over the years, notably its excellent conductive properties and its inability to react with water or oxygen.
This stems back to ancient times in the Mediterranean /Middle East, when a carat became used as a measure of the purity of gold alloys (see next Question 5). The purity of gold is now measured also in terms if fineness, i.e parts per thousand. Thus 18 carats is 18/24th of 1000 parts = 750 fineness.
A Carat (Karat in USA & Germany) was originally a unit of mass (weight) based on the Carob seed or bean used by ancient merchants in the Middle East. The Carob seed is from the Carob or locust bean tree. The carat is still used as such for the weight of gem stones (1 carat is about 200 mg). For gold, it has come to be used for measuring the purity of gold where pure gold is defined as 24 carats.
How and when this change occurred is not clear. It does involve the Romans who also used the name Siliqua Graeca (Keration in Greek, Qirat in Arabic, now Carat in modern times) for the bean of the Carob tree. The Romans also used the name Siliqua for a small silver coin which was one-twentyfourth of the golden solidus of Constantine. This latter had a mass of about 4.54 grams, so the Siliqua was approximately equivalent in value to the mass of 1 Keration or Siliqua Graeca of gold, i.e the value of 1/24th of a Solidus is about 1 Keration of gold, i.e 1 carat.
In 2001, mine production amounted to 2,604 tonnes, or 67% of total gold demand in that year. Gold production has been growing for years, but the real acceleration took place after the late 1970s, when output was in the region of 1,500tpa. This year’s output will fall short of production levels in 2001. This is partly for specific operational reasons at some of the larger mines (Grasberg and Porgera), along with lower grades at some of the operations in Nevada. The reduction in exploration and development expenditure over the past five years is leading a number of analysts to suggest that, with other operations nearing the end of their lives, global production is likely to drop slightly over the next two to three years – subject always of course to price.
The gold-containing ore has to be dug from the surface or blasted from the rock face underground. This is then hauled to the surface and milled to release the gold. The gold is then separated from the rock (gangue) by techniques such as flotation, smelted to a gold-rich doré and cast into bars. These are then refined to gold bars by the Miller chlorination process to a purity of 99.5%. If higher purity is needed or platinum group metal contaminants are present, this gold is further refined by the Wohlwill electrlytic process to 99.9% purity. Mine tailings containing low amounts of gold may be treated with cyanide to dissolve the gold and this is then extracted by the carbon in pulp technique before smelting and refining.
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