Page 98 - The Periodic Table Book

79
Au Gold

State: Solid
79 79 118 Discovery: c. 3000 bce

Transtion Metals colour unlike any chemical symbol Calaverite
Forms
Gold’s
Pure gold has
Au, comes
a dark yellow
from its latin
other metal.
name, aurum.

This mineral
ore contains gold
and tellurium.

These crystals
may be elongated,
rectangular, or cubic.

These flakes of
pure gold are locked
into quartz crystals.
Crystals of pure
Natural gold in quartz
gold refined in
a laboratory

People were making gold ornaments more yellow colour. Gold is naturally pure and seldom
than 6,000 years ago. This was many centuries makes compounds in nature; the compound in the
before they learned how to purify copper, iron, mineral ore calaverite is an exception. Pure gold
and other metals. Gold is believed by many to found in nature may form nuggets but mostly is
be the first metal element to be identified. It is a found as tiny specks embedded in rocks. Gold
96 dense, unreactive metal with a distinctive deep miners crush up these rocks and wash out the

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