History and Uses:

An attractive and highly valued metal, gold has been known for at least 5500 years. Gold is sometimes found free in nature but it is usually found in conjunction with silver , quartz (SiO2), calcite (CaCO3), lead , tellurium , zinc or copper . There is roughly 1 milligram of gold dissolved in every ton of seawater, although extracting it currently costs more than the gold is worth. It has been estimated that all of the gold that has currently been refined could be placed in a cube measuring 20 meters on a side. Gold is the most malleable and ductile of all known metals. A single ounce of gold can be beaten into a sheet measuring roughly 5 meters on a side. Thin sheets of gold, known as gold leaf, are primarily used in arts and crafts for gilding. One sheet of gold leaf can be as thin as 0.000127 millimeters, or about 400 times thinner than a human hair. Pure gold is soft and is usually alloyed with other metals, such as silver, copper, platinum or palladium ,......

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Title: Gold
Approximate Word Count: 10577
Approximate Pages: 43 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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