Because of its rarity and high price, manufacturers are always looking for ways to reduce the amount of gold required to make an object or substitute a less expensive metal in its place. Base metals clad with gold alloys have long been used as a way to reduce the amount of gold used in jewelry…

Gold is too expensive to use by chance. Instead it is used deliberately and only when less expensive substitutes cannot be identified. As a result, once a use is found for gold it is rarely abandoned for another metal. This means that the number of uses for gold have been increasing over time. Most of…

Gold has the highest malleability of any metal. This enables gold to be beaten into sheets that are only a few millionths of an inch thick. These thin sheets, known as “gold leaf” can be applied over the irregular surfaces of picture frames, molding, or furniture. Gold leaf is also used on the external and…

Gold has many uses in the production of glass. The most basic use in glassmaking is that of a pigment. A small amount of gold, if suspended in the glass when it is annealed, will produce a rich ruby color. Gold is also used when making specialty glass for climate-controlled buildings and cases. A small…

What metal is used to make the crown worn by a king? Gold! This metal is selected for use because gold is THE metal of highest esteem. It would make no sense to make a king’s crown out of steel – even though steel is the strongest metal. Gold is chosen for use in a…

If you are going to spend billions of dollars on a vehicle that when launched will travel on a voyage where the possibility of lubrication, maintenance and repair is absolutely zero, then building it with extremely dependable materials is essential. This is exactly why gold is used in hundreds of ways in every space vehicle…

Gold is used as a drug to treat a small number of medical conditions. Injections of weak solutions of sodium aurothiomalate or aurothioglucose are sometimes used to treat rheumatoid arthritis. Particles of a radioactive gold isotope are implanted in tissues to serve as a radiation source in the treatment of certain cancers. Small amounts of…

How would iron work as a dental filling? Not very well… your dentist would need blacksmithing tools, your smile would be rusty a few days after a filling, and you would need to get used to the taste of iron. Even at much higher expense, gold is used in dentistry because of its superior performance…

Gold is used in many places in the standard desktop or laptop computer. The rapid and accurate transmission of digital information through the computer and from one component to another requires an efficient and reliable conductor. Gold meets these requirements better than any other metal. The importance of high quality and reliable performance justifies the…

The most important industrial use of gold is in the manufacture of electronics. Solid state electronic devices use very low voltages and currents which are easily interrupted by corrosion or tarnish at the contact points. Gold is the highly efficient conductor that can carry these tiny currents and remain free of corrosion. Electronic components made…