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158-423: Gold is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Au (from Latin aurum ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a bright , slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable , and ductile metal . Chemically, gold is a transition metal , a group 11 element , and one of the noble metals . It is one of the least reactive chemical elements, being the second-lowest in the reactivity series . It

316-399: A fault . Water often lubricates faults, filling in fractures and jogs. About 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) below the surface, under very high temperatures and pressures, the water carries high concentrations of carbon dioxide, silica, and gold. During an earthquake, the fault jog suddenly opens wider. The water inside the void instantly vaporizes, flashing to steam and forcing silica, which forms

474-738: A pure element . In chemistry, a pure element means a substance whose atoms all (or in practice almost all) have the same atomic number, or number of protons . Nuclear scientists, however, define a pure element as one that consists of only one isotope. For example, a copper wire is 99.99% chemically pure if 99.99% of its atoms are copper, with 29 protons each. However it is not isotopically pure since ordinary copper consists of two stable isotopes, 69% Cu and 31% Cu, with different numbers of neutrons. However, pure gold would be both chemically and isotopically pure, since ordinary gold consists only of one isotope, Au. Atoms of chemically pure elements may bond to each other chemically in more than one way, allowing

632-540: A considerable amount of time. (See element naming controversy ). Precursors of such controversies involved the nationalistic namings of elements in the late 19th century. For example, lutetium was named in reference to Paris, France. The Germans were reluctant to relinquish naming rights to the French, often calling it cassiopeium . Similarly, the British discoverer of niobium originally named it columbium , in reference to

790-407: A crystal can produce dislocations in the crystal. Due to the small steps on the surface of most crystals, stress in some regions on the surface is much larger than the average stress in the lattice. This stress leads to dislocations. The dislocations are then propagated into the lattice in the same manner as in grain boundary initiation. In single crystals, the majority of dislocations are formed at

948-482: A crystalline material where some types of dislocation can move through the material bending, flexing and changing shape and interacting with other dislocations and features within the crystal. Dislocations are generated by deforming a crystalline material such as metals, which can cause them to initiate from surfaces, particularly at stress concentrations or within the material at defects and grain boundaries . The number and arrangement of dislocations give rise to many of

1106-477: A different element in nuclear reactions , which change an atom's atomic number. Historically, the term "chemical element" meant a substance that cannot be broken down into constituent substances by chemical reactions, and for most practical purposes this definition still has validity. There was some controversy in the 1920s over whether isotopes deserved to be recognized as separate elements if they could be separated by chemical means. The term "(chemical) element"

1264-481: A dilute solution of gold(III) chloride or chlorauric acid . Unlike sulfur, phosphorus reacts directly with gold at elevated temperatures to produce gold phosphide (Au 2 P 3 ). Gold readily dissolves in mercury at room temperature to form an amalgam , and forms alloys with many other metals at higher temperatures. These alloys can be produced to modify the hardness and other metallurgical properties, to control melting point or to create exotic colors. Gold

1422-470: A dislocation but the atoms on one side have moved or slipped. Dislocations define the boundary between slipped and unslipped regions of material and cannot end within a lattice and must either extend to a free edge or form a loop within the crystal. A dislocation can be characterised by the distance and direction of movement it causes to atoms in the lattice which is called the Burgers vector. The Burgers vector of

1580-406: A dislocation by homogeneous nucleation is a result of the rupture of the atomic bonds along a line in the lattice. A plane in the lattice is sheared, resulting in 2 oppositely faced half planes or dislocations. These dislocations move away from each other through the lattice. Since homogeneous nucleation forms dislocations from perfect crystals and requires the simultaneous breaking of many bonds,

1738-436: A dislocation remains constant even though the shape of the dislocation may change. A variety of dislocation types exist, with mobile dislocations known as glissile and immobile dislocations called sessile . The movement of mobile dislocations allow atoms to slide over each other at low stress levels and is known as glide or slip. The movement of dislocations may be enhanced or hindered by the presence of other elements within

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1896-643: A few decay products, to have been differentiated from other elements. Most recently, the synthesis of element 118 (since named oganesson ) was reported in October 2006, and the synthesis of element 117 ( tennessine ) was reported in April 2010. Of these 118 elements, 94 occur naturally on Earth. Six of these occur in extreme trace quantities: technetium , atomic number 43; promethium , number 61; astatine , number 85; francium , number 87; neptunium , number 93; and plutonium , number 94. These 94 elements have been detected in

2054-525: A few elements, such as silver and gold , are found uncombined as relatively pure native element minerals . Nearly all other naturally occurring elements occur in the Earth as compounds or mixtures. Air is mostly a mixture of molecular nitrogen and oxygen , though it does contain compounds including carbon dioxide and water , as well as atomic argon , a noble gas which is chemically inert and therefore does not undergo chemical reactions. The history of

2212-570: A gold-from-seawater swindle in the United States in the 1890s, as did an English fraudster in the early 1900s. Fritz Haber did research on the extraction of gold from sea water in an effort to help pay Germany 's reparations following World War I . Based on the published values of 2 to 64 ppb of gold in seawater, a commercially successful extraction seemed possible. After analysis of 4,000 water samples yielding an average of 0.004 ppb, it became clear that extraction would not be possible, and he ended

2370-829: A golden hue to metallic caesium . Common colored gold alloys include the distinctive eighteen-karat rose gold created by the addition of copper. Alloys containing palladium or nickel are also important in commercial jewelry as these produce white gold alloys. Fourteen-karat gold-copper alloy is nearly identical in color to certain bronze alloys, and both may be used to produce police and other badges . Fourteen- and eighteen-karat gold alloys with silver alone appear greenish-yellow and are referred to as green gold . Blue gold can be made by alloying with iron , and purple gold can be made by alloying with aluminium . Less commonly, addition of manganese , indium , and other elements can produce more unusual colors of gold for various applications. Colloidal gold , used by electron-microscopists,

2528-516: A line direction, which is the direction running along the bottom of the extra half plane, and the Burgers vector which describes the magnitude and direction of distortion to the lattice. In an edge dislocation, the Burgers vector is perpendicular to the line direction. The stresses caused by an edge dislocation are complex due to its inherent asymmetry. These stresses are described by three equations: where μ {\displaystyle \mu }

2686-498: A long cylinder of stress radiating outward from the cylinder and decreasing with distance. This simple model results in an infinite value for the core of the dislocation at r = 0 {\displaystyle r=0} and so it is only valid for stresses outside of the core of the dislocation. If the Burgers vector is very large, the core may actually be empty resulting in a micropipe , as commonly observed in silicon carbide . In many materials, dislocations are found where

2844-453: A material can be increased by plastic deformation by the following relationship: Since the dislocation density increases with plastic deformation, a mechanism for the creation of dislocations must be activated in the material. Three mechanisms for dislocation formation are homogeneous nucleation, grain boundary initiation, and interfaces between the lattice and the surface, precipitates, dispersed phases, or reinforcing fibers. The creation of

3002-451: A material increases its yield strength by preventing easy glide of dislocations. A pair of immobile jogs in a dislocation will act as a Frank–Read source under shear, increasing the overall dislocation density of a material. When a material's yield strength is increased via dislocation density increase, particularly when done by mechanical work, it is called work hardening . At high temperatures, vacancy facilitated movement of jogs becomes

3160-413: A much faster process, diminishing their overall effectiveness in impeding dislocation movement. Kinks are steps in a dislocation line parallel to glide planes. Unlike jogs, they facilitate glide by acting as a nucleation point for dislocation movement. The lateral spreading of a kink from the nucleation point allows for forward propagation of the dislocation while only moving a few atoms at a time, reducing

3318-458: A novel type of metal-halide perovskite material consisting of Au and Au cations in its crystal structure has been found. It has been shown to be unexpectedly stable at normal conditions. Gold pentafluoride , along with its derivative anion, AuF − 6 , and its difluorine complex , gold heptafluoride , is the sole example of gold(V), the highest verified oxidation state. Some gold compounds exhibit aurophilic bonding , which describes

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3476-428: A perfect crystal. In many materials, particularly ductile materials, dislocations are the "carrier" of plastic deformation, and the energy required to move them is less than the energy required to fracture the material. A dislocation is a linear crystallographic defect or irregularity within a crystal structure which contains an abrupt change in the arrangement of atoms. The crystalline order is restored on either side of

3634-413: A predicted shear stress of 3 000 to 24 000 MPa. This was difficult to reconcile with measured shear stresses in the range of 0.5 to 10 MPa. In 1934, Egon Orowan , Michael Polanyi and G. I. Taylor, independently proposed that plastic deformation could be explained in terms of the theory of dislocations. Dislocations can move if the atoms from one of the surrounding planes break their bonds and rebond with

3792-500: A pressure of 1 bar and a given temperature (typically at 298.15K). However, for phosphorus, the reference state is white phosphorus even though it is not the most stable allotrope, and the reference state for carbon is graphite, because the structure of graphite is more stable than that of the other allotropes. In thermochemistry , an element is defined to have an enthalpy of formation of zero in its reference state. Several kinds of descriptive categorizations can be applied broadly to

3950-483: A pressure of one atmosphere, are commonly used in characterizing the various elements. While known for most elements, either or both of these measurements is still undetermined for some of the radioactive elements available in only tiny quantities. Since helium remains a liquid even at absolute zero at atmospheric pressure, it has only a boiling point, and not a melting point, in conventional presentations. The density at selected standard temperature and pressure (STP)

4108-427: A regular array of atoms, arranged into lattice planes. An edge dislocation is a defect where an extra half-plane of atoms is introduced midway through the crystal, distorting nearby planes of atoms. When enough force is applied from one side of the crystal structure, this extra plane passes through planes of atoms breaking and joining bonds with them until it reaches the grain boundary. The dislocation has two properties,

4266-441: A result of single or multiple collision cascades , which results in locally high densities of interstitial atoms and vacancies. In most metals, prismatic dislocation loops are the energetically most preferred clusters of self-interstitial atoms. Geometrically necessary dislocations are arrangements of dislocations that can accommodate a limited degree of plastic bending in a crystalline material. Tangles of dislocations are found at

4424-438: A screw dislocation are less complex than those of an edge dislocation and need only one equation, as symmetry allows one radial coordinate to be used: where μ {\displaystyle \mu } is the shear modulus of the material, b {\displaystyle \mathbf {b} } is the Burgers vector, and r {\displaystyle r} is a radial coordinate. This equation suggests

4582-400: A sheet of 1 square metre (11 sq ft), and an avoirdupois ounce into 28 square metres (300 sq ft). Gold leaf can be beaten thin enough to become semi-transparent. The transmitted light appears greenish-blue because gold strongly reflects yellow and red. Such semi-transparent sheets also strongly reflect infrared light, making them useful as infrared (radiant heat) shields in

4740-456: A small group, (the metalloids ), having intermediate properties and often behaving as semiconductors . A more refined classification is often shown in colored presentations of the periodic table. This system restricts the terms "metal" and "nonmetal" to only certain of the more broadly defined metals and nonmetals, adding additional terms for certain sets of the more broadly viewed metals and nonmetals. The version of this classification used in

4898-514: A solution of Au(OH) 3 in concentrated H 2 SO 4 produces red crystals of gold(II) sulfate , Au 2 (SO 4 ) 2 . Originally thought to be a mixed-valence compound, it has been shown to contain Au 4+ 2 cations, analogous to the better-known mercury(I) ion, Hg 2+ 2 . A gold(II) complex, the tetraxenonogold(II) cation, which contains xenon as a ligand, occurs in [AuXe 4 ](Sb 2 F 11 ) 2 . In September 2023,

Gold - Misplaced Pages Continue

5056-548: A stacking fault. Two types of partial dislocation are the Frank partial dislocation which is sessile and the Shockley partial dislocation which is glissile. A Frank partial dislocation is formed by inserting or removing a layer of atoms on the {111} plane which is then bounded by the Frank partial. Removal of a close packed layer is known as an intrinsic stacking fault and inserting a layer

5214-508: A stair-rod dislocation with a Lomer-Cottrell dislocation at its apex. It is called a stair-rod because it is analogous to the rod that keeps carpet in-place on a stair. A Jog describes the steps of a dislocation line that are not in the glide plane of a crystal structure . A dislocation line is rarely uniformly straight, often containing many curves and steps that can impede or facilitate dislocation movement by acting as pinpoints or nucleation points respectively. Because jogs are out of

5372-474: A whole number. For example, the relative atomic mass of chlorine is 35.453 u, which differs greatly from a whole number as it is an average of about 76% chlorine-35 and 24% chlorine-37. Whenever a relative atomic mass value differs by more than ~1% from a whole number, it is due to this averaging effect, as significant amounts of more than one isotope are naturally present in a sample of that element. Chemists and nuclear scientists have different definitions of

5530-468: Is Au with a half-life of 2.27 days. Gold's least stable isomer is Au with a half-life of only 7 ns. Au has three decay paths: β decay, isomeric transition , and alpha decay. No other isomer or isotope of gold has three decay paths. The possible production of gold from a more common element, such as lead , has long been a subject of human inquiry, and the ancient and medieval discipline of alchemy often focused on it; however,

5688-691: Is Au , which decays by proton emission with a half-life of 30 μs. Most of gold's radioisotopes with atomic masses below 197 decay by some combination of proton emission , α decay , and β decay . The exceptions are Au , which decays by electron capture, and Au , which decays most often by electron capture (93%) with a minor β decay path (7%). All of gold's radioisotopes with atomic masses above 197 decay by β decay. At least 32 nuclear isomers have also been characterized, ranging in atomic mass from 170 to 200. Within that range, only Au , Au , Au , Au , and Au do not have isomers. Gold's most stable isomer

5846-404: Is 10 (for tin , element 50). The mass number of an element, A , is the number of nucleons (protons and neutrons) in the atomic nucleus. Different isotopes of a given element are distinguished by their mass number, which is written as a superscript on the left hand side of the chemical symbol (e.g., U). The mass number is always an integer and has units of "nucleons". Thus, magnesium-24 (24

6004-606: Is a mixture of C (about 98.9%), C (about 1.1%) and about 1 atom per trillion of C. Most (54 of 94) naturally occurring elements have more than one stable isotope. Except for the isotopes of hydrogen (which differ greatly from each other in relative mass—enough to cause chemical effects), the isotopes of a given element are chemically nearly indistinguishable. All elements have radioactive isotopes (radioisotopes); most of these radioisotopes do not occur naturally. Radioisotopes typically decay into other elements via alpha decay , beta decay , or inverse beta decay ; some isotopes of

6162-406: Is a dimensionless number equal to the atomic mass divided by the atomic mass constant , which equals 1 Da. In general, the mass number of a given nuclide differs in value slightly from its relative atomic mass, since the mass of each proton and neutron is not exactly 1 Da; since the electrons contribute a lesser share to the atomic mass as neutron number exceeds proton number; and because of

6320-646: Is also known, an example of a mixed-valence complex . Gold does not react with oxygen at any temperature and, up to 100 °C, is resistant to attack from ozone: Au + O 2 ⟶ ( no reaction ) {\displaystyle {\ce {Au + O2 ->}}({\text{no reaction}})} Au + O 3 → t < 100 ∘ C ( no reaction ) {\displaystyle {\ce {Au{}+O3->[{} \atop {t<100^{\circ }{\text{C}}}]}}({\text{no reaction}})} Some free halogens react to form

6478-518: Is also used in infrared shielding, the production of colored glass , gold leafing , and tooth restoration . Certain gold salts are still used as anti-inflammatory agents in medicine. Gold is the most malleable of all metals. It can be drawn into a wire of single-atom width, and then stretched considerably before it breaks. Such nanowires distort via the formation, reorientation, and migration of dislocations and crystal twins without noticeable hardening. A single gram of gold can be beaten into

Gold - Misplaced Pages Continue

6636-427: Is always richer at the exposed surface of gold-bearing veins, owing to the oxidation of accompanying minerals followed by weathering; and by washing of the dust into streams and rivers, where it collects and can be welded by water action to form nuggets. Gold sometimes occurs combined with tellurium as the minerals calaverite , krennerite , nagyagite , petzite and sylvanite (see telluride minerals ), and as

6794-812: Is an ongoing area of scientific study. The lightest elements are hydrogen and helium , both created by Big Bang nucleosynthesis in the first 20 minutes of the universe in a ratio of around 3:1 by mass (or 12:1 by number of atoms), along with tiny traces of the next two elements, lithium and beryllium . Almost all other elements found in nature were made by various natural methods of nucleosynthesis . On Earth, small amounts of new atoms are naturally produced in nucleogenic reactions, or in cosmogenic processes, such as cosmic ray spallation . New atoms are also naturally produced on Earth as radiogenic daughter isotopes of ongoing radioactive decay processes such as alpha decay , beta decay , spontaneous fission , cluster decay , and other rarer modes of decay. Of

6952-512: Is attributed to wind-blown dust or rivers. At 10 parts per quadrillion, the Earth's oceans would hold 15,000 tonnes of gold. These figures are three orders of magnitude less than reported in the literature prior to 1988, indicating contamination problems with the earlier data. A number of people have claimed to be able to economically recover gold from sea water , but they were either mistaken or acted in an intentional deception. Prescott Jernegan ran

7110-460: Is based on a Latin or other traditional word, for example adopting "gold" rather than "aurum" as the name for the 79th element (Au). IUPAC prefers the British spellings " aluminium " and "caesium" over the U.S. spellings "aluminum" and "cesium", and the U.S. "sulfur" over British "sulphur". However, elements that are practical to sell in bulk in many countries often still have locally used national names, and countries whose national language does not use

7268-400: Is known as an extrinsic stacking fault. The Burgers vector is normal to the {111} glide plane so the dislocation cannot glide and can only move through climb . In order to lower the overall energy of the lattice, edge and screw dislocations typically disassociate into a stacking fault bounded by two Shockley partial dislocations. The width of this stacking-fault region is proportional to

7426-464: Is most often called the oldest since this treasure is the largest and most diverse. Gold artifacts probably made their first appearance in Ancient Egypt at the very beginning of the pre-dynastic period, at the end of the fifth millennium BC and the start of the fourth, and smelting was developed during the course of the 4th millennium; gold artifacts appear in the archeology of Lower Mesopotamia during

7584-526: Is now questioned. The gold-bearing Witwatersrand rocks were laid down between 700 and 950 million years before the Vredefort impact. These gold-bearing rocks had furthermore been covered by a thick layer of Ventersdorp lavas and the Transvaal Supergroup of rocks before the meteor struck, and thus the gold did not actually arrive in the asteroid/meteorite. What the Vredefort impact achieved, however,

7742-436: Is often used in characterizing the elements. Density is often expressed in grams per cubic centimetre (g/cm ). Since several elements are gases at commonly encountered temperatures, their densities are usually stated for their gaseous forms; when liquefied or solidified, the gaseous elements have densities similar to those of the other elements. When an element has allotropes with different densities, one representative allotrope

7900-488: Is perfectly ordered on either side. This phenomenon is analogous to half of a piece of paper inserted into a stack of paper, where the defect in the stack is noticeable only at the edge of the half sheet. The theory describing the elastic fields of the defects was originally developed by Vito Volterra in 1907. In 1934, Egon Orowan , Michael Polanyi and G. I. Taylor , proposed that the low stresses observed to produce plastic deformation compared to theoretical predictions at

8058-426: Is red if the particles are small; larger particles of colloidal gold are blue. Gold has only one stable isotope , Au , which is also its only naturally occurring isotope, so gold is both a mononuclidic and monoisotopic element . Thirty-six radioisotopes have been synthesized, ranging in atomic mass from 169 to 205. The most stable of these is Au with a half-life of 186.1 days. The least stable

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8216-553: Is resistant to most acids, though it does dissolve in aqua regia (a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid ), forming a soluble tetrachloroaurate anion . Gold is insoluble in nitric acid alone, which dissolves silver and base metals , a property long used to refine gold and confirm the presence of gold in metallic substances, giving rise to the term ' acid test '. Gold dissolves in alkaline solutions of cyanide , which are used in mining and electroplating . Gold also dissolves in mercury , forming amalgam alloys, and as

8374-483: Is similarly unaffected by most bases. It does not react with aqueous , solid , or molten sodium or potassium hydroxide . It does however, react with sodium or potassium cyanide under alkaline conditions when oxygen is present to form soluble complexes. Common oxidation states of gold include +1 (gold(I) or aurous compounds) and +3 (gold(III) or auric compounds). Gold ions in solution are readily reduced and precipitated as metal by adding any other metal as

8532-483: Is solid under standard conditions . Gold often occurs in free elemental ( native state ), as nuggets or grains, in rocks , veins , and alluvial deposits . It occurs in a solid solution series with the native element silver (as in electrum ), naturally alloyed with other metals like copper and palladium , and mineral inclusions such as within pyrite . Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, often with tellurium ( gold tellurides ). Gold

8690-401: Is the shear modulus of the material, b {\displaystyle \mathbf {b} } is the Burgers vector , ν {\displaystyle \nu } is Poisson's ratio and x {\displaystyle x} and y {\displaystyle y} are coordinates. These equations suggest a vertically oriented dumbbell of stresses surrounding

8848-630: Is the applied shear stress, m {\displaystyle m} is a constant that decreases with increasing temperature. Increased shear stress will increase the dislocation velocity, while increased temperature will typically decrease the dislocation velocity. Greater phonon scattering at higher temperatures is hypothesized to be responsible for increased damping forces which slow the dislocation movement. Two main types of mobile dislocations exist: edge and screw. Dislocations found in real materials are typically mixed , meaning that they have characteristics of both. A crystalline material consists of

9006-426: Is the mass number) is an atom with 24 nucleons (12 protons and 12 neutrons). Whereas the mass number simply counts the total number of neutrons and protons and is thus an integer, the atomic mass of a particular isotope (or "nuclide") of the element is the mass of a single atom of that isotope, and is typically expressed in daltons (symbol: Da), or universal atomic mass units (symbol: u). Its relative atomic mass

9164-419: Is the movement of vacancies through a crystal lattice. If a vacancy moves next to the boundary of the extra half plane of atoms that forms an edge dislocation, the atom in the half plane closest to the vacancy can jump and fill the vacancy. This atom shift moves the vacancy in line with the half plane of atoms, causing a shift, or positive climb, of the dislocation. The process of a vacancy being absorbed at

9322-583: Is the soluble form of gold encountered in mining. The binary gold halides , such as AuCl , form zigzag polymeric chains, again featuring linear coordination at Au. Most drugs based on gold are Au(I) derivatives. Au(III) (referred to as auric) is a common oxidation state, and is illustrated by gold(III) chloride , Au 2 Cl 6 . The gold atom centers in Au(III) complexes, like other d compounds, are typically square planar , with chemical bonds that have both covalent and ionic character. Gold(I,III) chloride

9480-628: Is thought to have been delivered to Earth by asteroid impacts during the Late Heavy Bombardment , about 4 billion years ago. Gold which is reachable by humans has, in one case, been associated with a particular asteroid impact. The asteroid that formed Vredefort impact structure 2.020 billion years ago is often credited with seeding the Witwatersrand basin in South Africa with the richest gold deposits on earth. However, this scenario

9638-502: Is thought to have been produced in supernova nucleosynthesis , and from the collision of neutron stars , and to have been present in the dust from which the Solar System formed. Traditionally, gold in the universe is thought to have formed by the r-process (rapid neutron capture) in supernova nucleosynthesis , but more recently it has been suggested that gold and other elements heavier than iron may also be produced in quantity by

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9796-532: Is typically selected in summary presentations, while densities for each allotrope can be stated where more detail is provided. For example, the three familiar allotropes of carbon ( amorphous carbon , graphite , and diamond ) have densities of 1.8–2.1, 2.267, and 3.515 g/cm , respectively. The elements studied to date as solid samples have eight kinds of crystal structures : cubic , body-centered cubic , face-centered cubic, hexagonal , monoclinic , orthorhombic , rhombohedral , and tetragonal . For some of

9954-416: Is unaffected by most acids. It does not react with hydrofluoric , hydrochloric , hydrobromic , hydriodic , sulfuric , or nitric acid . It does react with selenic acid , and is dissolved by aqua regia , a 1:3 mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid . Nitric acid oxidizes the metal to +3 ions, but only in minute amounts, typically undetectable in the pure acid because of the chemical equilibrium of

10112-417: Is used in two different but closely related meanings: it can mean a chemical substance consisting of a single kind of atoms, or it can mean that kind of atoms as a component of various chemical substances. For example, molecules of water (H 2 O) contain atoms of hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O), so water can be said as a compound consisting of the elements hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) even though it does not contain

10270-429: Is very strong; fullerenes , which have nearly spherical shapes; and carbon nanotubes , which are tubes with a hexagonal structure (even these may differ from each other in electrical properties). The ability of an element to exist in one of many structural forms is known as 'allotropy'. The reference state of an element is defined by convention, usually as the thermodynamically most stable allotrope and physical state at

10428-585: Is widely used. For example, the French chemical terminology distinguishes élément chimique (kind of atoms) and corps simple (chemical substance consisting of a single kind of atoms); the Russian chemical terminology distinguishes химический элемент and простое вещество . Almost all baryonic matter in the universe is composed of elements (among rare exceptions are neutron stars ). When different elements undergo chemical reactions, atoms are rearranged into new compounds held together by chemical bonds . Only

10586-480: The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) had recognized a total of 118 elements. The first 94 occur naturally on Earth , and the remaining 24 are synthetic elements produced in nuclear reactions. Save for unstable radioactive elements (radioelements) which decay quickly, nearly all elements are available industrially in varying amounts. The discovery and synthesis of further new elements

10744-625: The Latin alphabet are likely to use the IUPAC element names. According to IUPAC, element names are not proper nouns; therefore, the full name of an element is not capitalized in English, even if derived from a proper noun , as in californium and einsteinium . Isotope names are also uncapitalized if written out, e.g., carbon-12 or uranium-235 . Chemical element symbols (such as Cf for californium and Es for einsteinium), are always capitalized (see below). In

10902-746: The New World . It was used extensively as such by American publications before the international standardization (in 1950). Before chemistry became a science , alchemists designed arcane symbols for both metals and common compounds. These were however used as abbreviations in diagrams or procedures; there was no concept of atoms combining to form molecules . With his advances in the atomic theory of matter, John Dalton devised his own simpler symbols, based on circles, to depict molecules. Dislocation The two primary types of dislocations are sessile dislocations which are immobile and glissile dislocations which are mobile. Examples of sessile dislocations are

11060-583: The Old Testament , starting with Genesis 2:11 (at Havilah ), the story of the golden calf , and many parts of the temple including the Menorah and the golden altar. In the New Testament , it is included with the gifts of the magi in the first chapters of Matthew. The Book of Revelation 21:21 describes the city of New Jerusalem as having streets "made of pure gold, clear as crystal". Exploitation of gold in

11218-461: The Precambrian time onward. It most often occurs as a native metal , typically in a metal solid solution with silver (i.e. as a gold/silver alloy ). Such alloys usually have a silver content of 8–10%. Electrum is elemental gold with more than 20% silver, and is commonly known as white gold . Electrum's color runs from golden-silvery to silvery, dependent upon the silver content. The more silver,

11376-638: The Varna Necropolis near Lake Varna and the Black Sea coast, thought to be the earliest "well-dated" finding of gold artifacts in history. Several prehistoric Bulgarian finds are considered no less old – the golden treasures of Hotnitsa, Durankulak , artifacts from the Kurgan settlement of Yunatsite near Pazardzhik , the golden treasure Sakar, as well as beads and gold jewelry found in the Kurgan settlement of Provadia – Solnitsata ("salt pit"). However, Varna gold

11534-992: The Ying Yuan , one kind of square gold coin. In Roman metallurgy , new methods for extracting gold on a large scale were developed by introducing hydraulic mining methods, especially in Hispania from 25 BC onwards and in Dacia from 106 AD onwards. One of their largest mines was at Las Medulas in León , where seven long aqueducts enabled them to sluice most of a large alluvial deposit. The mines at Roşia Montană in Transylvania were also very large, and until very recently, still mined by opencast methods. They also exploited smaller deposits in Britain , such as placer and hard-rock deposits at Dolaucothi . The various methods they used are well described by Pliny

11692-423: The kinetic isotope effect is significant). Thus, all carbon isotopes have nearly identical chemical properties because they all have six electrons, even though they may have 6 to 8 neutrons. That is why atomic number, rather than mass number or atomic weight , is considered the identifying characteristic of an element. The symbol for atomic number is Z . Isotopes are atoms of the same element (that is, with

11850-405: The nuclear binding energy and electron binding energy. For example, the atomic mass of chlorine-35 to five significant digits is 34.969 Da and that of chlorine-37 is 36.966 Da. However, the relative atomic mass of each isotope is quite close to its mass number (always within 1%). The only isotope whose atomic mass is exactly a natural number is C, which has a mass of 12 Da; because

12008-467: The reducing agent . The added metal is oxidized and dissolves, allowing the gold to be displaced from solution and be recovered as a solid precipitate. Less common oxidation states of gold include −1, +2, and +5. The −1 oxidation state occurs in aurides, compounds containing the Au anion . Caesium auride (CsAu), for example, crystallizes in the caesium chloride motif; rubidium, potassium, and tetramethylammonium aurides are also known. Gold has

12166-410: The shear stress at which neighbouring atomic planes slip over each other in a perfect crystal suggests that, for a material with shear modulus G {\displaystyle G} , shear strength τ m {\displaystyle \tau _{m}} is given approximately by: The shear modulus in metals is typically within the range 20 000 to 150 000 MPa indicating

12324-542: The stacking-fault energy of the material. The combined effect is known as an extended dislocation and is able to glide as a unit. However, dissociated screw dislocations must recombine before they can cross slip , making it difficult for these dislocations to move around barriers. Materials with low stacking-fault energies have the greatest dislocation dissociation and are therefore more readily cold worked. If two glide dislocations that lie on different {111} planes split into Shockley partials and intersect, they will produce

12482-470: The stair-rod dislocation and the Lomer–Cottrell junction . The two main types of mobile dislocations are edge and screw dislocations. Edge dislocations can be visualized as being caused by the termination of a plane of atoms in the middle of a crystal . In such a case, the surrounding planes are not straight, but instead bend around the edge of the terminating plane so that the crystal structure

12640-638: The 94 naturally occurring elements, those with atomic numbers 1 through 82 each have at least one stable isotope (except for technetium , element 43 and promethium , element 61, which have no stable isotopes). Isotopes considered stable are those for which no radioactive decay has yet been observed. Elements with atomic numbers 83 through 94 are unstable to the point that radioactive decay of all isotopes can be detected. Some of these elements, notably bismuth (atomic number 83), thorium (atomic number 90), and uranium (atomic number 92), have one or more isotopes with half-lives long enough to survive as remnants of

12798-461: The Elder in his encyclopedia Naturalis Historia written towards the end of the first century AD. Chemical element A chemical element is a chemical substance whose atoms all have the same number of protons . The number of protons is called the atomic number of that element. For example, oxygen has an atomic number of 8, meaning each oxygen atom has 8 protons in its nucleus. Atoms of

12956-487: The French, Italians, Greeks, Portuguese and Poles prefer "azote/azot/azoto" (from roots meaning "no life") for "nitrogen". For purposes of international communication and trade, the official names of the chemical elements both ancient and more recently recognized are decided by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), which has decided on a sort of international English language, drawing on traditional English names even when an element's chemical symbol

13114-487: The atomic masses of the elements (their atomic weights or atomic masses) do not always increase monotonically with their atomic numbers. The naming of various substances now known as elements precedes the atomic theory of matter, as names were given locally by various cultures to various minerals, metals, compounds, alloys, mixtures, and other materials, though at the time it was not known which chemicals were elements and which compounds. As they were identified as elements,

13272-440: The atoms at the terminating edge. In effect, a half plane of atoms is moved in response to shear stress by breaking and reforming a line of bonds, one (or a few) at a time. The energy required to break a row of bonds is far less than that required to break all the bonds on an entire plane of atoms at once. Even this simple model of the force required to move a dislocation shows that plasticity is possible at much lower stresses than in

13430-434: The boundary of a half plane of atoms, rather than created, is known as negative climb. Since dislocation climb results from individual atoms jumping into vacancies, climb occurs in single atom diameter increments. During positive climb, the crystal shrinks in the direction perpendicular to the extra half plane of atoms because atoms are being removed from the half plane. Since negative climb involves an addition of atoms to

13588-440: The boundary of the cut is a screw dislocation. It comprises a structure in which a helical path is traced around the linear defect (dislocation line) by the atomic planes in the crystal lattice. In pure screw dislocations, the Burgers vector is parallel to the line direction. An array of screw dislocations can cause what is known as a twist boundary. In a twist boundary, the misalignment between adjacent crystal grains occurs due to

13746-413: The chemical substances (di)hydrogen (H 2 ) and (di)oxygen (O 2 ), as H 2 O molecules are different from H 2 and O 2 molecules. For the meaning "chemical substance consisting of a single kind of atoms", the terms "elementary substance" and "simple substance" have been suggested, but they have not gained much acceptance in English chemical literature, whereas in some other languages their equivalent

13904-1405: The corresponding gold halides. Gold is strongly attacked by fluorine at dull-red heat to form gold(III) fluoride AuF 3 . Powdered gold reacts with chlorine at 180 °C to form gold(III) chloride AuCl 3 . Gold reacts with bromine at 140 °C to form a combination of gold(III) bromide AuBr 3 and gold(I) bromide AuBr, but reacts very slowly with iodine to form gold(I) iodide AuI: 2 Au + 3 F 2 → Δ 2 AuF 3 {\displaystyle {\ce {2Au{}+3F2->[{} \atop \Delta ]2AuF3}}} 2 Au + 3 Cl 2 → Δ 2 AuCl 3 {\displaystyle {\ce {2Au{}+3Cl2->[{} \atop \Delta ]2AuCl3}}} 2 Au + 2 Br 2 → Δ AuBr 3 + AuBr {\displaystyle {\ce {2Au{}+2Br2->[{} \atop \Delta ]AuBr3{}+AuBr}}} 2 Au + I 2 → Δ 2 AuI {\displaystyle {\ce {2Au{}+I2->[{} \atop \Delta ]2AuI}}} Gold does not react with sulfur directly, but gold(III) sulfide can be made by passing hydrogen sulfide through

14062-400: The crystal and over time, these elements may diffuse to the dislocation forming a Cottrell atmosphere . The pinning and breakaway from these elements explains some of the unusual yielding behavior seen with steels. The interaction of hydrogen with dislocations is one of the mechanisms proposed to explain hydrogen embrittlement . Dislocations behave as though they are a distinct entity within

14220-407: The cumulative effect of screw dislocations within the material. These dislocations cause a rotational misorientation between the adjacent grains, leading to a twist-like deformation along the boundary. Twist boundaries can significantly influence the mechanical and electrical properties of materials, affecting phenomena such as grain boundary sliding, creep, and fracture behavior The stresses caused by

14378-408: The dalton is defined as 1/12 of the mass of a free neutral carbon-12 atom in the ground state. The standard atomic weight (commonly called "atomic weight") of an element is the average of the atomic masses of all the chemical element's isotopes as found in a particular environment, weighted by isotopic abundance, relative to the atomic mass unit. This number may be a fraction that is not close to

14536-447: The degree of dislocation entanglement, and ultimately the yield strength of the material. Repeated cycling of a material can lead to the generation and bunching of dislocations surrounded by regions that are relatively dislocation free. This pattern forms a ladder like structure known as a persistent slip bands (PSB). PSB's are so-called, because they leave marks on the surface of metals that even when removed by polishing, return at

14694-419: The densest element, osmium , is 22.588 ± 0.015 g/cm . Whereas most metals are gray or silvery white, gold is slightly reddish-yellow. This color is determined by the frequency of plasma oscillations among the metal's valence electrons, in the ultraviolet range for most metals but in the visible range for gold due to relativistic effects affecting the orbitals around gold atoms. Similar effects impart

14852-416: The discovery and use of elements began with early human societies that discovered native minerals like carbon , sulfur , copper and gold (though the modern concept of an element was not yet understood). Attempts to classify materials such as these resulted in the concepts of classical elements , alchemy , and similar theories throughout history. Much of the modern understanding of elements developed from

15010-435: The dislocation density increases due to the formation of new dislocations. The consequent increasing overlap between the strain fields of adjacent dislocations gradually increases the resistance to further dislocation motion. This causes a hardening of the metal as deformation progresses. This effect is known as strain hardening or work hardening. Dislocation density ρ {\displaystyle \rho } in

15168-413: The dislocation, with compression experienced by the atoms near the "extra" plane, and tension experienced by those atoms near the "missing" plane. A screw dislocation can be visualized by cutting a crystal along a plane and slipping one half across the other by a lattice vector, the halves fitting back together without leaving a defect. If the cut only goes part way through the crystal, and then slipped,

15326-662: The early 4th millennium. As of 1990, gold artifacts found at the Wadi Qana cave cemetery of the 4th millennium BC in West Bank were the earliest from the Levant. Gold artifacts such as the golden hats and the Nebra disk appeared in Central Europe from the 2nd millennium BC Bronze Age . The oldest known map of a gold mine was drawn in the 19th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt (1320–1200 BC), whereas

15484-399: The early stage of deformation and appear as non well-defined boundaries; the process of dynamic recovery leads eventually to the formation of a cellular structure containing boundaries with misorientation lower than 15° (low angle grain boundaries). Adding pinning points that inhibit the motion of dislocations, such as alloying elements, can introduce stress fields that ultimately strengthen

15642-406: The elements are available by name, atomic number, density, melting point, boiling point and chemical symbol , as well as ionization energy . The nuclides of stable and radioactive elements are also available as a list of nuclides , sorted by length of half-life for those that are unstable. One of the most convenient, and certainly the most traditional presentation of the elements, is in the form of

15800-470: The elements are often summarized using the periodic table, which powerfully and elegantly organizes the elements by increasing atomic number into rows ( "periods" ) in which the columns ( "groups" ) share recurring ("periodic") physical and chemical properties. The table contains 118 confirmed elements as of 2021. Although earlier precursors to this presentation exist, its invention is generally credited to Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869, who intended

15958-480: The elements can be uniquely sequenced by atomic number, conventionally from lowest to highest (as in a periodic table), sets of elements are sometimes specified by such notation as "through", "beyond", or "from ... through", as in "through iron", "beyond uranium", or "from lanthanum through lutetium". The terms "light" and "heavy" are sometimes also used informally to indicate relative atomic numbers (not densities), as in "lighter than carbon" or "heavier than lead", though

16116-413: The elements without any stable isotopes are technetium (atomic number 43), promethium (atomic number 61), and all observed elements with atomic number greater than 82. Of the 80 elements with at least one stable isotope, 26 have only one stable isotope. The mean number of stable isotopes for the 80 stable elements is 3.1 stable isotopes per element. The largest number of stable isotopes for a single element

16274-474: The elements, including consideration of their general physical and chemical properties, their states of matter under familiar conditions, their melting and boiling points, their densities, their crystal structures as solids, and their origins. Several terms are commonly used to characterize the general physical and chemical properties of the chemical elements. A first distinction is between metals , which readily conduct electricity , nonmetals , which do not, and

16432-549: The energy required for homogeneous nucleation is high. For instance, the stress required for homogeneous nucleation in copper has been shown to be τ hom G = 7.4 × 10 − 2 {\displaystyle {\frac {\tau _{\text{hom}}}{G}}=7.4\times 10^{-2}} , where G {\displaystyle G} is the shear modulus of copper (46 GPa). Solving for τ hom {\displaystyle \tau _{\text{hom}}\,\!} , we see that

16590-492: The existing names for anciently known elements (e.g., gold, mercury, iron) were kept in most countries. National differences emerged over the element names either for convenience, linguistic niceties, or nationalism. For example, German speakers use "Wasserstoff" (water substance) for "hydrogen", "Sauerstoff" (acid substance) for "oxygen" and "Stickstoff" (smothering substance) for "nitrogen"; English and some other languages use "sodium" for "natrium", and "potassium" for "kalium"; and

16748-630: The explosive stellar nucleosynthesis that produced the heavy metals before the formation of our Solar System . At over 1.9 × 10 years, over a billion times longer than the estimated age of the universe, bismuth-209 has the longest known alpha decay half-life of any isotope, and is almost always considered on par with the 80 stable elements. The heaviest elements (those beyond plutonium, element 94) undergo radioactive decay with half-lives so short that they are not found in nature and must be synthesized . There are now 118 known elements. In this context, "known" means observed well enough, even from just

16906-572: The first written reference to gold was recorded in the 12th Dynasty around 1900 BC. Egyptian hieroglyphs from as early as 2600 BC describe gold, which King Tushratta of the Mitanni claimed was "more plentiful than dirt" in Egypt. Egypt and especially Nubia had the resources to make them major gold-producing areas for much of history. One of the earliest known maps, known as the Turin Papyrus Map , shows

17064-529: The formation of Earth, they are certain to have completely decayed, and if present in novae, are in quantities too small to have been noted. Technetium was the first purportedly non-naturally occurring element synthesized, in 1937, though trace amounts of technetium have since been found in nature (and also the element may have been discovered naturally in 1925). This pattern of artificial production and later natural discovery has been repeated with several other radioactive naturally occurring rare elements. List of

17222-431: The glide plane, under shear they cannot move by glide (movement along the glide plane). They instead must rely on vacancy diffusion facilitated climb to move through the lattice. Away from the melting point of a material, vacancy diffusion is a slow process, so jogs act as immobile barriers at room temperature for most metals. Jogs typically form when two non-parallel dislocations cross during slip. The presence of jogs in

17380-401: The gold acts simply as a solute, this is not a chemical reaction . A relatively rare element, gold is a precious metal that has been used for coinage , jewelry , and other works of art throughout recorded history . In the past, a gold standard was often implemented as a monetary policy . Gold coins ceased to be minted as a circulating currency in the 1930s, and the world gold standard

17538-400: The grain. The steps and ledges at the grain boundary are an important source of dislocations in the early stages of plastic deformation. The Frank–Read source is a mechanism that is able to produce a stream of dislocations from a pinned segment of a dislocation. Stress bows the dislocation segment, expanding until it creates a dislocation loop that breaks free from the source. The surface of

17696-547: The half plane, the crystal grows in the direction perpendicular to the half plane. Therefore, compressive stress in the direction perpendicular to the half plane promotes positive climb, while tensile stress promotes negative climb. This is one main difference between slip and climb, since slip is caused by only shear stress. One additional difference between dislocation slip and climb is the temperature dependence. Climb occurs much more rapidly at high temperatures than low temperatures due to an increase in vacancy motion. Slip, on

17854-431: The half-lives predicted for the observationally stable lead isotopes range from 10 to 10 years. Elements with atomic numbers 43, 61, and 83 through 94 are unstable enough that their radioactive decay can be detected. Three of these elements, bismuth (element 83), thorium (90), and uranium (92) have one or more isotopes with half-lives long enough to survive as remnants of the explosive stellar nucleosynthesis that produced

18012-399: The heaviest elements also undergo spontaneous fission . Isotopes that are not radioactive, are termed "stable" isotopes. All known stable isotopes occur naturally (see primordial nuclide ). The many radioisotopes that are not found in nature have been characterized after being artificially produced. Certain elements have no stable isotopes and are composed only of radioisotopes: specifically

18170-543: The heavy elements before the formation of the Solar System. For example, at over 1.9 × 10 years, over a billion times longer than the estimated age of the universe, bismuth-209 has the longest known alpha decay half-life of any isotope. The last 24 elements (those beyond plutonium, element 94) undergo radioactive decay with short half-lives and cannot be produced as daughters of longer-lived elements, and thus are not known to occur in nature at all. 1 The properties of

18328-560: The highest electron affinity of any metal, at 222.8 kJ/mol, making Au a stable species, analogous to the halides . Gold also has a –1 oxidation state in covalent complexes with the group 4 transition metals, such as in titanium tetraauride and the analogous zirconium and hafnium compounds. These chemicals are expected to form gold-bridged dimers in a manner similar to titanium(IV) hydride . Gold(II) compounds are usually diamagnetic with Au–Au bonds such as [ Au(CH 2 ) 2 P(C 6 H 5 ) 2 ] 2 Cl 2 . The evaporation of

18486-406: The interface normal. Interfaces with misfit dislocations may form e.g. as a result of epitaxial crystal growth on a substrate. Dislocation loops may form in the damage created by energetic irradiation . A prismatic dislocation loop can be understood as an extra (or missing) collapsed disk of atoms, and can form when interstitial atoms or vacancies cluster together. This may happen directly as

18644-403: The interface plane between two crystals. This occurs when the lattice spacing of the two crystals do not match, resulting in a misfit of the lattices at the interface. The stress caused by the lattice misfit is released by forming regularly spaced misfit dislocations. Misfit dislocations are edge dislocations with the dislocation line in the interface plane and the Burgers vector in the direction of

18802-594: The line direction and Burgers vector are neither perpendicular nor parallel and these dislocations are called mixed dislocations , consisting of both screw and edge character. They are characterized by φ {\displaystyle \varphi } , the angle between the line direction and Burgers vector, where φ = π / 2 {\displaystyle \varphi =\pi /2} for pure edge dislocations and φ = 0 {\displaystyle \varphi =0} for screw dislocations. Partial dislocations leave behind

18960-447: The lower the specific gravity . Native gold occurs as very small to microscopic particles embedded in rock, often together with quartz or sulfide minerals such as " fool's gold ", which is a pyrite . These are called lode deposits. The metal in a native state is also found in the form of free flakes, grains or larger nuggets that have been eroded from rocks and end up in alluvial deposits called placer deposits . Such free gold

19118-481: The material by requiring a higher applied stress to overcome the pinning stress and continue dislocation motion. The effects of strain hardening by accumulation of dislocations and the grain structure formed at high strain can be removed by appropriate heat treatment ( annealing ) which promotes the recovery and subsequent recrystallization of the material. The combined processing techniques of work hardening and annealing allow for control over dislocation density,

19276-540: The mineral quartz, and gold out of the fluids and onto nearby surfaces. The world's oceans contain gold. Measured concentrations of gold in the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific are 50–150 femtomol /L or 10–30 parts per quadrillion (about 10–30 g/km). In general, gold concentrations for south Atlantic and central Pacific samples are the same (~50 femtomol/L) but less certain. Mediterranean deep waters contain slightly higher concentrations of gold (100–150 femtomol/L), which

19434-409: The noble metals, it still forms many diverse compounds. The oxidation state of gold in its compounds ranges from −1 to +5, but Au(I) and Au(III) dominate its chemistry. Au(I), referred to as the aurous ion, is the most common oxidation state with soft ligands such as thioethers , thiolates , and organophosphines . Au(I) compounds are typically linear. A good example is Au(CN) − 2 , which

19592-406: The other hand, has only a small dependence on temperature. Dislocation avalanches occur when multiple simultaneous movement of dislocations occur. Dislocation velocity is largely dependent upon shear stress and temperature, and can often be fit using a power law function: where A {\displaystyle A} is a material constant, τ {\displaystyle \tau }

19750-418: The periodic table, which groups together elements with similar chemical properties (and usually also similar electronic structures). The atomic number of an element is equal to the number of protons in each atom, and defines the element. For example, all carbon atoms contain 6 protons in their atomic nucleus ; so the atomic number of carbon is 6. Carbon atoms may have different numbers of neutrons; atoms of

19908-426: The periodic tables presented here includes: actinides , alkali metals , alkaline earth metals , halogens , lanthanides , transition metals , post-transition metals , metalloids , reactive nonmetals , and noble gases . In this system, the alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, and transition metals, as well as the lanthanides and the actinides, are special groups of the metals viewed in a broader sense. Similarly,

20066-559: The plan of a gold mine in Nubia together with indications of the local geology . The primitive working methods are described by both Strabo and Diodorus Siculus , and included fire-setting . Large mines were also present across the Red Sea in what is now Saudi Arabia . Gold is mentioned in the Amarna letters numbered 19 and 26 from around the 14th century BC. Gold is mentioned frequently in

20224-457: The project. The earliest recorded metal employed by humans appears to be gold, which can be found free or " native ". Small amounts of natural gold have been found in Spanish caves used during the late Paleolithic period, c.  40,000 BC . The oldest gold artifacts in the world are from Bulgaria and are dating back to the 5th millennium BC (4,600 BC to 4,200 BC), such as those found in

20382-592: The properties of metals such as ductility , hardness and yield strength . Heat treatment , alloy content and cold working can change the number and arrangement of the dislocation population and how they move and interact in order to create useful properties. When metals are subjected to cold working (deformation at temperatures which are relatively low as compared to the material's absolute melting temperature, T m {\displaystyle T_{m}} i.e., typically less than 0.4 T m {\displaystyle 0.4T_{m}} )

20540-412: The pure element to exist in multiple chemical structures ( spatial arrangements of atoms ), known as allotropes , which differ in their properties. For example, carbon can be found as diamond , which has a tetrahedral structure around each carbon atom; graphite , which has layers of carbon atoms with a hexagonal structure stacked on top of each other; graphene , which is a single layer of graphite that

20698-678: The r-process in the collision of neutron stars . In both cases, satellite spectrometers at first only indirectly detected the resulting gold. However, in August 2017, the spectroscopic signatures of heavy elements, including gold, were observed by electromagnetic observatories in the GW170817 neutron star merger event, after gravitational wave detectors confirmed the event as a neutron star merger. Current astrophysical models suggest that this single neutron star merger event generated between 3 and 13 Earth masses of gold. This amount, along with estimations of

20856-619: The rare bismuthide maldonite ( Au 2 Bi ) and antimonide aurostibite ( AuSb 2 ). Gold also occurs in rare alloys with copper , lead , and mercury : the minerals auricupride ( Cu 3 Au ), novodneprite ( AuPb 3 ) and weishanite ( (Au,Ag) 3 Hg 2 ). A 2004 research paper suggests that microbes can sometimes play an important role in forming gold deposits, transporting and precipitating gold to form grains and nuggets that collect in alluvial deposits. A 2013 study has claimed water in faults vaporizes during an earthquake, depositing gold. When an earthquake strikes, it moves along

21014-419: The rate of occurrence of these neutron star merger events, suggests that such mergers may produce enough gold to account for most of the abundance of this element in the universe. Because the Earth was molten when it was formed , almost all of the gold present in the early Earth probably sank into the planetary core . Therefore, as hypothesized in one model, most of the gold in the Earth's crust and mantle

21172-935: The reaction. However, the ions are removed from the equilibrium by hydrochloric acid, forming AuCl − 4 ions, or chloroauric acid , thereby enabling further oxidation: 2 Au + 6 H 2 SeO 4 → 200 ∘ C Au 2 ( SeO 4 ) 3 + 3 H 2 SeO 3 + 3 H 2 O {\displaystyle {\ce {2Au{}+6H2SeO4->[{} \atop {200^{\circ }{\text{C}}}]Au2(SeO4)3{}+3H2SeO3{}+3H2O}}} Au + 4 HCl + HNO 3 ⟶ HAuCl 4 + NO ↑ + 2 H 2 O {\displaystyle {\ce {Au{}+4HCl{}+HNO3->HAuCl4{}+NO\uparrow +2H2O}}} Gold

21330-772: The reactive nonmetals and the noble gases are nonmetals viewed in the broader sense. In some presentations, the halogens are not distinguished, with astatine identified as a metalloid and the others identified as nonmetals. Another commonly used basic distinction among the elements is their state of matter (phase), whether solid , liquid , or gas , at standard temperature and pressure (STP). Most elements are solids at STP, while several are gases. Only bromine and mercury are liquid at 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) and 1 atmosphere pressure; caesium and gallium are solid at that temperature, but melt at 28.4°C (83.2°F) and 29.8°C (85.6°F), respectively. Melting and boiling points , typically expressed in degrees Celsius at

21488-919: The remaining 11 elements have half lives too short for them to have been present at the beginning of the Solar System, and are therefore considered transient elements. Of these 11 transient elements, five ( polonium , radon , radium , actinium , and protactinium ) are relatively common decay products of thorium and uranium . The remaining six transient elements (technetium, promethium, astatine, francium , neptunium , and plutonium ) occur only rarely, as products of rare decay modes or nuclear reaction processes involving uranium or other heavy elements. Elements with atomic numbers 1 through 82, except 43 (technetium) and 61 (promethium), each have at least one isotope for which no radioactive decay has been observed. Observationally stable isotopes of some elements (such as tungsten and lead ), however, are predicted to be slightly radioactive with very long half-lives: for example,

21646-406: The required stress is 3.4 GPa, which is very close to the theoretical strength of the crystal. Therefore, in conventional deformation homogeneous nucleation requires a concentrated stress, and is very unlikely. Grain boundary initiation and interface interaction are more common sources of dislocations. Irregularities at the grain boundaries in materials can produce dislocations which propagate into

21804-500: The rest of the gold on Earth is thought to have been incorporated into the planet since its very beginning, as planetesimals formed the mantle . In 2017, an international group of scientists established that gold "came to the Earth's surface from the deepest regions of our planet", the mantle, as evidenced by their findings at Deseado Massif in the Argentinian Patagonia . On Earth, gold is found in ores in rock formed from

21962-624: The same element can have different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei, known as isotopes of the element. Two or more atoms can combine to form molecules . Some elements are formed from molecules of identical atoms , e. g. atoms of hydrogen (H) form diatomic molecules (H 2 ). Chemical compounds are substances made of atoms of different elements; they can have molecular or non-molecular structure. Mixtures are materials containing different chemical substances; that means (in case of molecular substances) that they contain different types of molecules. Atoms of one element can be transformed into atoms of

22120-495: The same element having different numbers of neutrons are known as isotopes of the element. The number of protons in the nucleus also determines its electric charge , which in turn determines the number of electrons of the atom in its non-ionized state. The electrons are placed into atomic orbitals that determine the atom's chemical properties . The number of neutrons in a nucleus usually has very little effect on an element's chemical properties; except for hydrogen (for which

22278-404: The same number of protons in their nucleus), but having different numbers of neutrons . Thus, for example, there are three main isotopes of carbon. All carbon atoms have 6 protons, but they can have either 6, 7, or 8 neutrons. Since the mass numbers of these are 12, 13 and 14 respectively, said three isotopes are known as carbon-12 , carbon-13 , and carbon-14 ( C, C, and C). Natural carbon

22436-416: The same place with continued cycling. PSB walls are predominately made up of edge dislocations. In between the walls, plasticity is transmitted by screw dislocations. Where PSB's meet the surface, extrusions and intrusions form, which under repeated cyclic loading, can lead to the initiation of a fatigue crack. Dislocations can slip in planes containing both the dislocation line and the Burgers vector,

22594-470: The same result and showing that the isotopes of gold produced by it were all radioactive . In 1980, Glenn Seaborg transmuted several thousand atoms of bismuth into gold at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Gold can be manufactured in a nuclear reactor, but doing so is highly impractical and would cost far more than the value of the gold that is produced. Although gold is the most noble of

22752-457: The second half of the 20th century, physics laboratories became able to produce elements with half-lives too short for an appreciable amount of them to exist at any time. These are also named by IUPAC, which generally adopts the name chosen by the discoverer. This practice can lead to the controversial question of which research group actually discovered an element, a question that delayed the naming of elements with atomic number of 104 and higher for

22910-495: The so called glide plane. For a screw dislocation, the dislocation line and the Burgers vector are parallel, so the dislocation may slip in any plane containing the dislocation. For an edge dislocation, the dislocation and the Burgers vector are perpendicular, so there is one plane in which the dislocation can slip. Dislocation climb is an alternative mechanism of dislocation motion that allows an edge dislocation to move out of its slip plane. The driving force for dislocation climb

23068-519: The south-east corner of the Black Sea is said to date from the time of Midas , and this gold was important in the establishment of what is probably the world's earliest coinage in Lydia around 610 BC. The legend of the golden fleece dating from eighth century BCE may refer to the use of fleeces to trap gold dust from placer deposits in the ancient world. From the 6th or 5th century BC, the Chu (state) circulated

23226-435: The surface of the metal in tension because the oxygen atoms squeeze into the lattice, and the oxygen atoms are under compression. This greatly increases the stress on the surface of the metal and consequently the amount of dislocations formed at the surface. The increased amount of stress on the surface steps results in an increase in dislocations formed and emitted from the interface. Dislocations may also form and remain in

23384-419: The surface. The dislocation density 200 micrometres into the surface of a material has been shown to be six times higher than the density in the bulk. However, in polycrystalline materials the surface sources do not have a major effect because most grains are not in contact with the surface. The interface between a metal and an oxide can greatly increase the number of dislocations created. The oxide layer puts

23542-496: The synthetically produced transuranic elements, available samples have been too small to determine crystal structures. Chemical elements may also be categorized by their origin on Earth, with the first 94 considered naturally occurring, while those with atomic numbers beyond 94 have only been produced artificially via human-made nuclear reactions. Of the 94 naturally occurring elements, 83 are considered primordial and either stable or weakly radioactive. The longest-lived isotopes of

23700-955: The table to illustrate recurring trends in the properties of the elements. The layout of the table has been refined and extended over time as new elements have been discovered and new theoretical models have been developed to explain chemical behavior. Use of the periodic table is now ubiquitous in chemistry, providing an extremely useful framework to classify, systematize and compare all the many different forms of chemical behavior. The table has also found wide application in physics , geology , biology , materials science , engineering , agriculture , medicine , nutrition , environmental health , and astronomy . Its principles are especially important in chemical engineering . The various chemical elements are formally identified by their unique atomic numbers, their accepted names, and their chemical symbols . The known elements have atomic numbers from 1 to 118, conventionally presented as Arabic numerals . Since

23858-435: The tendency of gold ions to interact at distances that are too long to be a conventional Au–Au bond but shorter than van der Waals bonding . The interaction is estimated to be comparable in strength to that of a hydrogen bond . Well-defined cluster compounds are numerous. In some cases, gold has a fractional oxidation state. A representative example is the octahedral species {Au( P(C 6 H 5 ) 3 )} 2+ 6 . Gold

24016-441: The time could be explained in terms of the theory of dislocations. The theory describing the elastic fields of the defects was originally developed by Vito Volterra in 1907. The term 'dislocation' referring to a defect on the atomic scale was coined by G. I. Taylor in 1934. Prior to the 1930s, one of the enduring challenges of materials science was to explain plasticity in microscopic terms. A simplistic attempt to calculate

24174-402: The transmutation of the chemical elements did not become possible until the understanding of nuclear physics in the 20th century. The first synthesis of gold was conducted by Japanese physicist Hantaro Nagaoka , who synthesized gold from mercury in 1924 by neutron bombardment. An American team, working without knowledge of Nagaoka's prior study, conducted the same experiment in 1941, achieving

24332-561: The universe at large, in the spectra of stars and also supernovae, where short-lived radioactive elements are newly being made. The first 94 elements have been detected directly on Earth as primordial nuclides present from the formation of the Solar System , or as naturally occurring fission or transmutation products of uranium and thorium. The remaining 24 heavier elements, not found today either on Earth or in astronomical spectra, have been produced artificially: all are radioactive, with short half-lives; if any of these elements were present at

24490-409: The visors of heat-resistant suits and in sun visors for spacesuits . Gold is a good conductor of heat and electricity . Gold has a density of 19.3 g/cm, almost identical to that of tungsten at 19.25 g/cm; as such, tungsten has been used in the counterfeiting of gold bars , such as by plating a tungsten bar with gold. By comparison, the density of lead is 11.34 g/cm, and that of

24648-528: The work of Dmitri Mendeleev , a Russian chemist who published the first recognizable periodic table in 1869. This table organizes the elements by increasing atomic number into rows (" periods ") in which the columns (" groups ") share recurring ("periodic") physical and chemical properties . The periodic table summarizes various properties of the elements, allowing chemists to derive relationships between them and to make predictions about elements not yet discovered, and potential new compounds. By November 2016,

24806-779: Was abandoned for a fiat currency system after the Nixon shock measures of 1971. In 2020, the world's largest gold producer was China, followed by Russia and Australia. As of 2020, a total of around 201,296 tonnes of gold exist above ground. This is equal to a cube, with each side measuring roughly 21.7 meters (71 ft). The world's consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments , and 10% in industry . Gold's high malleability, ductility, resistance to corrosion and most other chemical reactions, as well as conductivity of electricity have led to its continued use in corrosion-resistant electrical connectors in all types of computerized devices (its chief industrial use). Gold

24964-604: Was to distort the Witwatersrand basin in such a way that the gold-bearing rocks were brought to the present erosion surface in Johannesburg , on the Witwatersrand , just inside the rim of the original 300 km (190 mi) diameter crater caused by the meteor strike. The discovery of the deposit in 1886 launched the Witwatersrand Gold Rush . Some 22% of all the gold that is ascertained to exist today on Earth has been extracted from these Witwatersrand rocks. Much of

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