All That Glisters Is Not Gold Trivia Quiz

Answer: Gold occurs naturally in its metallic form

Gold, along with silver and copper, is one of the very few metals that occurs naturally in its pure, metallic form. It took a long time for people to learn to smelt metals from their ores, but gold occurs naturally, in the form of nuggets and flakes, making it one of the few metals that ancient peoples could find and exploit without having to refine it.

The oldest known gold artefacts are from a site in Bulgaria called Varna, which dates from around 4600 BC. The artefacts at Varna are quite sophisticated, indicating that gold was mined and worked long before that date.

Answer: 1

The only naturally occurring isotope of gold is gold-179. 36 other isotopes have been produced by scientists, all with very short half-lives. Gold is known as a monoisotopic element; there are a total of 26 elements with only one stable isotope.

Answer: Jewelry

Just as today, ancient people found the color of gold attractive. Furthermore, it was soft and easily worked, so it could be formed into a variety of shapes, and designs could be hammered into it. The earliest gold artefacts are beads, bracelets, and other jewelry items. Gold was too soft to make into weapons (except those which served only a ceremonial purpose), and coins were a much later invention than jewelry. Gold was too rare to be made into cooking utensils, although it was sometimes made into drinking cups and spoons.

Answer: 1 square meter

Over 5,000 years ago the ancient Egyptians learned that gold could be beaten into very thin sheets. A specially prepared material made from the intestines of oxen, called "goldbeater's skin," was used. Very thin pieces of gold were placed between pieces of this tough, parchment-like material and pounded with a smooth, round stone until the gold was only 1/250,000 of an inch thick.

This incredibly thin gold tissue, called "gold leaf," could be used to cover statues, base-metal jewelry, and other objects for decorative purposes.

This process is called "gilding." Today, metal objects are more likely to be gold-plated using electricity, but gold leaf is still used to gild items like picture frames.

Answer: It can be drawn or stretched to form a fine wire

Gold is one of the most ductile of all metals. A single ounce of gold can be drawn into a wire 50 miles (80 km) long! In medieval times, rich people would often use very fine gold wires as threads with which to embroider their clothes. There was even a process where individual silk threads were wrapped in incredibly fine gold wires; these were used to create a fabric called "cloth-of-gold."

Answer: Yes

Gold is unaffected by most common strong acids - hydrochloric, nitric, and sulfuric - but it will react with a solution called "aqua regia." Aqua regia is a mixture of one part nitric acid and three parts hydrochloric acid. Neither acid alone will dissolve gold, but in combination they will cause the gold to react and form a compound called chloroauric acid. Because of its unique qualities, aqua regia is often used to extract gold from its ores during the refining process.

Answer: In the supernova explosions of vanished stars

Following the Big Bang, the only elements that existed were hydrogen, helium, and lithium. All the other elements that exist were formed in the interiors of stars. Our sun is a modest-sized star; it can't fuse hydrogen into elements much heavier than carbon or oxygen. Heavy metals, like gold, are formed when a truly massive star explodes in what is called a supernova. These don't happen very often, maybe three times a year in the Milky Way galaxy on average.

Scientist have found that our sun is a second generation star. Sometime around five billion years ago, give or take a few hundred million years, one or more nearby stars went bang, and the massive explosion is believed to have triggered the process that began the formation of the sun and and our solar system. As it was forming, the sun absorbed some of the material from the supernova. The sun contains a lot of heavy elements for a star of its size, and that's the only place they could have originated. The "leftover" material from the sun's formation, which became the Earth and the other planets, absorbed some of this material as well, which is why heavy elements are relatively common.

But here's something you probably didn't know. Early in its life, the Earth was in molten state. Most of the gold, and the other heavy elements, would have sunk to the core. But we find quite a bit of gold in the Earth's crust. How did it get there? Well, it's believed that about four billion years ago, as the Earth was cooling and the crust was forming, it was suddenly hit by large numbers of huge asteroids, in something called "the late heavy bombardment" event. The gold we find near the surface today is believed to have come from these asteroids. So the gold in the ring you're wearing might have been born in the heart of a star that doesn't exist any more, and brought here by an asteroid.

Answer: Your cell phone

According to a 2011 study by the U.S. Geological Survey, the typical cell phone contains 0.034 grams of gold. If the price of gold is at $1200 an ounce, that works out to be about $1.30 worth of gold. Your computer and television set contain gold as well; almost all electronic equipment does.

Although both silver and copper are better conductors of electricity than gold, gold's ability to resist corrosion makes it a vital element in many electronic components, especially switches and connectors, which are often heavily gold plated. About 10% - 12% of all gold mined is used in the electronics industry.

Answer: No

You can pretty much eat all the gold you want, as long as it's metallic gold. Gold doesn't react with the hydrochloric acid in your stomach, and isn't absorbed by the body. That's why you'll see gold flakes floating around in some liqueurs, like Goldschläger, a type of schnapps.

It's harmless. Some high-end restaurants create desserts wrapped in gold leaf, and charge very high prices for the privilege of eating a few pennies' worth of gold. A one liter bottle of Goldschläger contains 13 mg of gold.

The gold's appeal is entirely cosmetic; metallic gold has no taste or smell. A word of warning: while metallic gold is harmless, some gold compounds are toxic!

Answer: China

For a long time, South Africa was the world's largest producer of gold, but by 2013 it had fallen to fifth place. In 2013 the world's largest producer of gold was China, followed by Australia, the United States, and Russia. China is also the world's largest consumer of gold. About 2,800 metric tonnes of gold were mined worldwide in 2013. Consumption of gold was about 3,865 metric tonnes.

Although demand usually exceeds production, there are large stores of gold in the form of coins, jewelry, and bars. If the price of gold rises sufficiently, these will come on the market, and there is little chance the world will run out of gold any time soon.