Industrial And Medical Lasers Use Gold example essay topic

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 (SiO 2), calcite (CaCO 3), 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, to increase its strength. Gold alloys are used to make jewelry, decorative items, dental fillings and coins. The amount of gold in an alloy is measured with a unit called a carat.

One carat is equal to one part in twenty-four, so an 18 carat gold ring contains 18 parts pure gold and 6 parts alloy material. Gold is a good conductor of heat and electricity and does not tarnish when it is exposed to the air, so it can be used to make electrical connectors and printed circuit boards. Gold is also a good reflector of infrared radiation and can be used to help shield spacecraft and skyscrapers from the sun's heat. Gold coated mirrors can be used to make telescopes that are sensitive to infrared light. A radioactive isotope of gold, gold-198, is used for treating cancer. Gold sodium (A uNa 3 O 6 S 4) is used as a treatment for arthritis.

Chlor auric acid (HAuCl 4) is used to preserve photographs by replacing the silver atoms present in an image. Availability: gold is available in many forms including wire, foil, and bars. Small and large samples of gold foil, wire, and teflon coated wire (and gold alloy in wire form) can be purified. Gold is usually alloyed in jewellery to give it more strength, and the term carat describes the amount of gold present (24 carats is pure gold).

It is estimated that all the gold in the world, so far refined, could be placed in a single cube 60 ft. on a side. It is metallic, with a yellow colour when in a mass, but when finely divided it may be black, ruby, or purple. It is the most malleable and ductile metal; 1 ounce (28 g) of gold can be beaten out to 300 square feet. It is a soft metal and is usually alloyed to give it more strength.

It is a good conductor of heat and electricity, and is unaffected by air and most reagents. The most common gold compounds are auric chloride (Haucl 3) and acid (HAuCl 4). A mixture of one part nitric acid with three of hydrochloric acid is called aqua regia (because it dissolved gold, the King of Metals). It is unaffected by air and most reagents. It is found free in nature and associated with quartz, pyrite and other minerals. Two thirds of the world's supply comes from South Africa, and 2/3 of USA production is from South Dakota and Nevada.

Gold is found in sea water, but no effective economic process has been designed (yet) to extract it from this source Here is a brief summary of the isolation of gold. It would not normally be necessary to make gold in the laboratory as it is readily available commercially. The most romantic way to extract gold is by panning it out from a stream in some pleasant valley but most such sources are now depleted. Panning relies upon the density of gold (which is very high) being much greater than that of the sand and other particulates. It therefore settles to the bottom of the pan. Today, more often than not, gold is extracted from ores.

These ores often contain relatively little gold. Some of these processes cause environmental concern. The ore is crushed to a powder so as to expose the small gold particles. These are dissolved by treatment of the rock with cyanide solution in air. The result of this is a gold cyanide complex.

Addition of zinc powder to the resulting solution precipitates out the gold. In 1837, under pressure of a bad drought, Thomas Learmonth and a group of squatters explored the area to the north of their settlement near Geelong in search of better watered regions. On this journey they reached and climbed Mt. Bon an Y owing (now Buninyong) and were thus the first to see the Ballarat area. In March 1838, two squatters, Yu ille and Anderson, settled with their flocks on the banks of an area known as Black Swamp, now Lake Wendouree. Star of the East Gold Mine During the next 13 years, shepherds and their flocks roamed in the area with Buninyong becoming the service township for the settlers.

The peace and tranquillity of the district was shattered soon after the discovery of gold in the area in August 1851. The discovery precipitated a great rush to the area which in turn resulted in the rapid growth of the new town of Ballarat. By the end of September, nearly a 1000 miners were digging for gold on the Ballarat field - By 1853, there were more than 20,000 miners of many nationalities working on the field. In that same year, 10,000,000 grams of gold were transported under police escort to the Melbourne Treasury. Probably as much again was never recorded but sold secretly and illegally. Over the next four (4) years, more than 77,700,000 grams reached Melbourne under escort.

On June 10th 1858, the great Welcome Nugget was found. It weighed 68,956 grams and contained an estimated 68,272 grams of pure gold. In the 1860's, when the shallow alluvial deposits began to run out, companies were formed to exploit the deep quartz lodes. Many proved to be extraordinarily rich.

From one shaft of the Band of Hope and Albion Consols mine, 9.7 tonnes of gold were extracted. At its peak, in 1868, the Ballarat goldfield supported 300 companies and the population of the settlement was estimated at 64,000. In 1870, wild speculation caused a recession of the mining industry and dozens of companies failed. The recession ended as more stable industries replaced gold mining. Mixed farming and pastoral activities around the City required service industries and shopping facilities. Workers from the mines were absorbed into businesses and industries.

Ballarat's last mine closed down in 1918. The total recorded yield from the Ballarat Goldfield amounted to 20,592,000 Troy ounces (Ballarat Historical Society Publication No. 1) and based on a gold price of $A 500 per ounce the total value would be around $10,000,000,000. A remarkable figure when it is realised that a large amount of the gold discovered in the district was never recorded. Ballarat was the scene of Australia's most famous civic insurrection. On 3 December 1854 at Eureka, miners clashed with police and detachments of the 12th and 40th regiments.

In all, 28 men were killed and a large number wounded. Ballarat was proclaimed a township in 1852, created a municipality in 1855, a borough in 1863, and was proclaimed a City on 9 September 1870. California's most famous gold rush dates to the morning of January 24, 1848, when James Marshall made his customary inspection of the sawmill he was building for John Sutter. During the previous night, Marshall had diverted water through the mill's tailrace to wash away loose dirt and gravel, and on that fateful day, he noticed some shining flecks of metal left behind by the running water.

He picked them up and showed them to his crew, but while he was pretty sure that it was gold, the full significance of his discovery was truly impossible to imagine. He was still concerned about getting the mill finished. Word of Marshall's discovery leaked out and immediately set off a 'rush to the mines. ' By the spring of 1849, the largest gold rush in American history was under way. At the time of Marshall's discovery, the state's non-Indian population numbered about 14,000. By the end of 1849, it had risen to nearly 100,000, and it continued to swell to some 250,000 by 1852.

Gold was both plentiful and - by happy geologic accident- easy to extract, making the gold-bearing gravels of California's rivers into what has been described as 'the finest opportunity that, has ever been offered on any mining frontier. ' A contemporary newspaper put it slightly differently: 'The whole country, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and from the sea shore to the base of the Sierra Nevada, resounds with the cry of 'gold, GOLD, GOLD!' while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and everything neglected but the manufacture of shovels and pickaxes. ' Today, a few mines and the remains of several boom towns have been preserved in a variety of state parks. Most of them, including the Marshall Gold Discovery site, the fabulous Empire Mine, the historic town of Columbia, the rich gold deposits at Plumas Eureka, and the controversial hydraulic mining pits at Malak off Diggings, are located in or near the Mother Lode region of the central Sierra Nevada foothills.

The riverfront embarcadero and commercial district of the Gold Rush preserved at Old Sacramento teemed with activity as would-be miners disembarked from riverboats and regrouped before setting out for the Mother Lode. Outfitters and other merchants there thrived on the gold trade, portrayed in the re-created Huntington & Hopkins Hardware Store. The mining boom that Captain John Sutter himself set in motion nearly destroyed his Nuevo Helvetia agricultural empire headquartered at Sutter^aEURTMs Fort. A portion of his Mexican land grant became the bustling Gold Rush boom town of Sacramento. While gold-seekers were pouring through Sacramento and into the Sierra, deposits of the precious metal were also discovered in the Klamath Mountains of northwest California. Today, ruins of the historic town of Shasta and the Chinese temple at Weaverville Joss House State Historic Park recall the days of the Klamath gold rush.

In combination, the Mother Lode and the Klamath gold fields produced the modern-day equivalent of more than $25 billion in gold before the turn of the century, with operations continuing at Empire Mine until as late as 1956. Between the 1860's and the turn of the century, prospectors found gold in a number of locations in California. One of the Wests largest authentic ghost towns is Bodie in the eastern Sierra Nevada, now a state historic park that preserves the abandoned buildings of the rough-and-tumble mining town that sprang up in response to a gold strike in 1877. In Southern California, three historic gold mining areas lie within the state parks. Park headquarters at Red Rock Canyon State Park is on the site of what was once an important community in a region that produced several million dollars in gold, primarily in the 1890's -including one 14-ounce nugget. At Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, visitors can tour the remains of the Stonewall Mine, which produced $2 million worth of gold between 1870 and 1892.

At Picacho State Recreation Area on the lower Colorado River, visitors can view Picacho Mill, the last visible remnant of Picacho, a gold mining community that boasted a population of 2,500 in 1904.4 Au + 8 NaCN + O 2 + 2 H 2 O 4 Na [Au (CN) 2] + 4 NaOH 2 Na [Au (CN) 2] + Zn 2 NaCN + Zn (CN) 2 + Au (s) Known since prehistoric times. The name is the Anglo-saxon word for the metal and the symbol comes from the Latin aurum, 'gold' A soft metal with a characteristic colour and, since it is chemically un reactive, one of the few elements to occur in the natural state. It will dissolve in aqua regia ('royal water'), a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids. It can be beaten into very thin sheets ('gold leaf') to be used as architectural ornament. Another use is in jewellery, and some is also employed in the electronics industry and to colour glass or make it heat-reflecting.

About 1500 tons of gold are mined each year, chiefly in South Africa and the USSR, and the most of this is stored as bullion. There is a lot of gold in the sea, but with only 1 gram in 100,000 tons of sea water, schemes to reclaim gold from the oceans have always failed. Gold was dated back to very early times, and has been a valuable asset ever since. Gold is found free in nature and is widely distributed and is almost always associated with quartz or pyrite. It is almost always found by using the panning techniques.

Nearly two thirds of the world's output of Gold comes from Africa, and about two thirds of the U.S. output of Gold comes from South Dakota. Recovering Gold from sea water has not been a profitable venture for anybody. THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN CALIFORNIA. by Gen. John A. Sutter It was in the first part of January, 1848, when the gold was discovered at Coloma, where I was then building a saw-mill. The contractor and builder of this mill was James W. Marshall, from New Jersey.

In the fall of 1847, after the mill seat had been located, I sent up to this place Mr. P.L. Wimmer with his family, and a number of laborers, from the disbanded Mormon Battalion; and a little later I engaged Mr. Bennet from Oregon to assist Mr. Marshall in the mechanical labors of the mill. Mr. Wimmer had the team in charge, assisted by his young sons, to do the necessary teaming, and Mrs. Wimmer did the cooking for all hands. I was very much in need of a new saw-mill, to get lumber to finish my large flouring mill, of four run of stones, at Brighton, which was commenced at the same time, and was rapidly progressing; likewise for other buildings, fences, etc., for the small village of Yerba Buena, (now San Francisco.) In the City Hotel, (the only one) at the dinner table this enterprise was unkindly called ^aEURoeanother folly of Sutter^aEURTMs, ^aand a radical change in the economic and social fabric of the nation. Sketch of the gold diggings at Ophir, County of Wellington, New South Wales [picture] / from a drawing taken on the spot by Mr J. K orff, May 1851 [Sydney:'s. n., 1851? ]. Bal combe, T. (Thomas), 1810-1861.

Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia Gold frenzy Ophir was home to more than 1000 prospectors just four months after Hargreaves discovery. Gold fever gripped the nation and the colonial authorities responded by appointing 'Commissioners of Land' to regulate the diggings and collect licence fees for each 'claim'. A complete mental madness appears to have seized almost every member of the community. There has been a universal rush to the diggings. Bathurst Free PressHargraves could never have dreamt how significant his discovery would be. New South Wales yielded 26.4 tonnes (850,000 ounces) of gold in 1852.

This was a mere drop in the ocean compared to the yield from neighbouring Victoria when they joined the rush for gold. The Victorian authorities, eager to prevent its population from joining the gold frenzy in NSW, offered a reward of ^Alb 200 for any gold found within 200 miles of Melbourne. In 1851, six months after the New South Wales find, gold was discovered at Ballarat, and a short time later at Bendigo Creek. A nation transformed In 1852 alone, 370,000 immigrants arrived in Australia and the economy of the nation boomed. The 'rush' was well and truly on.

Victoria contributed more than one third of the world's gold output in the 1850's and in just two years the State's population had grown from 77,000 to 540,000! The number of new arrivals to Australia was greater than the number of convicts who had landed here in the previous seventy years. The total population trebled from 430,000 in 1851 to 1.7 million in 1871. The gold bullion that was shipped to London each year brought a huge flow of imports. The goldfield towns also sparked a huge boost in business investment and stimulated the market for local produce. The economy was expanding and thriving.

Because so many people were travelling to and from the goldfields, the 1850's also saw the construction of the first railway and the operation of the first telegraphs. The rush to the rest of Australia Following the gold rushes of NSW and Victoria, deposits were uncovered throughout the land. Only South Australia failed to produce any gold deposits of significance. The first discoveries in other States were made in Western Australia in the early 1850's (the rich Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie fields were not found until the 1890s); Queensland in 1853; the Northern Territory in 1865; and Tasmania, at Beaconsfield in 1877.

Multiculturalism on the goldfields Soon after the discovery of the goldfields in Victoria an exodus of unprecedented volume started, bringing to Australia people with a range of skills and professions, unthought of prior to the discovery of gold. Australia attracted adventurers from all around the world. The majority of these new arrivals were British but also included Americans, French, Italian, German, Polish and Hungarian exiles. The largest foreign contingent on the goldfields was the 40,000 Chinese who made their way to Australia. In 1861, Chinese immigrants made up 3.3 per cent of the Australian population, the greatest it has ever been. These Chinese were nearly all men (38,337 men and only eleven women!) and most were under contract to Chinese and foreign businessmen.

In exchange for their passage money, they worked on the goldfields until their debt was paid off. Most then returned to China. Between 1852 and 1889, there were 40,721 arrivals and 36,049 departures. Racism There were campaigns to oust the Chinese from the goldfields. The motivation was based on racism and fear of competition for dwindling amounts of easily found gold as the Chinese were known as untiring workers. A simmering discontent Diggers on the Turon fields, on the Turon River near Bathurst, had grown angry and had threatened to riot if the cost of licensing fees was not reduced.

The monthly fee of 30 shillings for each claim was tough to pay in hard times and the claims were only 13.5 square metre's on the surface, which made them difficult to work. The governor of New South Wales, Governor Fitzroy, wisely reduced the fees by two thirds, but stood firm on the way it was collected, so resented by the diggers who called them the police 'digger hunts'. Police would descend on the goldfields seeking out those diggers who had not paid their fees. Those who hadn't paid were hauled before magistrates and fined ^Alb 5 for the first offence. The fine doubled for each subsequent offence. As the police digger hunts grew more unpopular, the police began using more and more force.

The Eureka Stockade Between 1851 and 1854 tension was building on the goldfields. Clashes between the miners and the authorities became more frequent with significant discontent brewing over the injustice of the goldfield licensing system and police corruption. At Ballarat, the tension was rising quickly. The Ballarat Reform League was set up under the leadership of an Irish engineer, Peter Lalor. His fellow rebels were a passionate and colourful bunch, including a Prussian republican, Fredrick Vern; the Italian red shirt, Raffaele Carbon i; and the Scottish Chartist, Tom Kennedy. In December 1854, 1000 men gathered at Eureka, on the outskirts of Ballarat and unfurled their flag, a white cross and stars on a blue field, to proclaim their oath: We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other, and fight to defend our rights and liberties.

In a tragic climax to the rising tensions, troops from Melbourne overran the stockade and killed 22 of its defenders. Vindication Juries in Melbourne refused to convict the rebel leaders who were put on trial for high treason. A Royal Commission condemned the goldfield administration and the miners' grievances were remedied. Their demands for political representation were also met. Within a year, Peter Lalor - the leader of the rebels - became a member of the Victorian parliament. The end of transportation The discovery of gold in NSW and Victoria accelerated the abolition of convict transportation to the east coast of Australia, and ultimately to the nation as a whole.

By continuing to send convicts to the eastern colonies, it was, in effect, giving free passage to potential gold diggers. And why would the new convict arrivals want to work for a living when a fortune awaited them on the goldfields? How many ancient people worshipped the sun, or a deity represented by the sun? We may never know, but certainly Egypt and many others. The sun was often recognized as a giver of life and even within pagan religions where many gods were worshipped, the sun god was often given a high status.

To many civilizations that worshipped the sun, it comes as no surprise that gold was seen as a valuable representation of the sun, given its shinny yellow attributes. In Egypt, gold was considered the skin of the gods, particularly RA. During the earliest periods of Egyptian history, only kings were allowed to where gold, but later the privilege was extended to priests and some other members of the royal court. The chamber that held the king's sarcophagus was known as the 'house of gold'.

Never tarnishing, is was used extensively in the statues of gods and even to adorn temples. Mixed with other metals, it coated the pyramid ions atop the Pyramids and obelisks. Because of gold's religious significance, it also became an idea material in funerary art. A grand example is the mask of Tutankhamun, but even lesser officials imitated the king with gilded masks, or masked painted gold. Actually, goldsmiths seldom cast anything from the pure metal but rather gilded objects made from other materials. Even in modern times, Egypt can thank gold for its popularity among many travelers and those who love to discover her past.

When Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, it wasn't the grand nature of a complete tomb that so intrigued the world, but rather the golden riches of the find. But even in ancient times, Egypt was envied for its treasure. Up until the Middle Kingdom, silver was considered as valuable to the Egyptians as gold, but after that time frame Egyptians seem to have become fanatical over gold. The earliest geological map, known as the Turin Papyrus, diagrams the stone quarries and the gold mines in the Wadi Hammamet near Naqada, once known as Nut (gold town). The king even carried the 'Golden Horus' name as part of his or her Royal Titulary. The ancient Egyptians filled their treasuries with gold any way they could come by it, including mining, tribute or plunder.

It was also the primary cause of ancient tomb robbery and therefore a path to riches for some of the common people of Egypt. Mining was often carried out by convicts under military control. This was a dangerous endeavor from which many of the laborers probably never returned. Rock embedded with gold had to be broken up and washed prior to the actual refining. Early mining operations were carried out in the Eastern Desert and Nubia to the south. Some scholars believe that the name Nubia derives from an early name for gold, and there is little question that much of the warfare between Egypt and Nubia resulted from the Egyptian thirst of this precious metal.

But much of Egypt's gold wealth was probably obtained first by plunder and then as tribute. We know this from tombs such as that of Sobekhotep which depict Nubians bringing gold as tribute. Other sources tell us that Syria / Palestine also paid gold as tribute. Such gold was often cast into rings for ease of transport. And today we wonder about what Egyptologists tell us is the other 75% of antiquities that are still buried in the sands of Egypt. What riches are yet to be found?

Each year there are new, grand discoveries made such as the golden mummies in the Western deserts. We can only wait to see what the future brings us from Egypt's past. A Brief History of The Health Support Uses of Gold The earliest records of the use of gold for medicinal and healing purposes come from Alexandria, Egypt. Over 5,000 years ago, the Egyptians ingested gold for mental, bodily and spiritual purification.

The ancients believed that gold in the body worked by stimulating the life force and raising the level of vibration on all levels. The Alchemists of Alexandria developed an 'elixir' made of liquid gold. They believed that gold was a mystical metal that represented the perfection of matter, and that its presence in the body would enliven, rejuvenate, and cure a multitude of diseases as well as restore youth and perfect health. As many as 4,500 years ago, the Egyptians used gold in dentistry. Remarkable examples of its early use have been found by modern archaeologists. Still in favor today as an ideal material for dental work, approximately 13 tons of gold are used each year for crowns, bridges, inlays and dentures.

Gold is ideal for these purposes because it is non-toxic, can be shaped easily, and never wears, corrodes or tarnishes. In medieval Europe, gold-coated pills and 'gold waters' were extremely popular. Alchemists mixed powdered gold into drinks to 'comfort sore limbs,' which is one of the earliest references to arthritis. During the Renaissance, Paracelsus (1493-1541) - who is considered the founder of modern pharmacology - developed many successful medicines from metallic minerals including gold. One of the greatest alchemists / chemists of all time, he founded the school of Iatrochemistry, the chemistry of medicine, which is the forerunner of pharmacology. In the 1900's, surgeons would often implant a gold piece under the skin near an inflamed joint, such as a knee or elbow.

As a result, the pain would often subside or cease altogether. In China, the restorative properties of gold are still honored in rural villages, where peasants cook their rice with a gold coin to replenish the mineral in their bodies, and fancy Chinese restaurants put 24-karat gold-leaf in their food preparations. Colloidal Gold If metallic gold is divided into fine particles (sizes ranging from one to one hundred billionths of a meter) and the particles are permanently suspended in solution, the mineral becomes known as Colloidal Gold and exhibits new properties due to the larger amount of gold surface area available. Colloidal Gold was first prepared in a pure state in 1857 by the distinguished English chemist, Michael Faraday. Many uses were found for the amazing solutions of 'activated gold. ' In 1890, the German bacteriologist Robert Koch discovered that compounds made with gold inhibited growth of the bacillus that caused tuberculosis and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery.

In the nineteenth century, Colloidal Gold was commonly used in the United States to cure alcoholism (then called dipsomania, defined as the uncontrollable craving for alcoholic liquors), and today it is used to reduce dependency on alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, and carbohydrates. In the United States, as far back as 1885, gold had been known for its healing capabilities for the heart and improved blood circulation. And gold has been used to treat arthritis continuously since 1927. Europeans have long been aware of the benefits of gold in the system and have been buying gold-coated pills and 'Gold Water' over the counter for well over 100 years. In July of 1935, Clinical, Medicine & Surgery had an article entitled 'Colloidal Gold in Inoperable Cancer' written by Edward H. Ochsner, M.D., B.S., F.A.C.S. which stated, 'When the condition is hopeless, Colloidal Gold helps prolong life and makes life much more bearable, both to the patient and to those about them, because it shortens the period of terminal cachexia (general physical wasting and malnutrition usually associated with chronic disease) and greatly reduces pain and discomfort and the need of opiates (narcotics) in a majority of instances. ' Modern Uses Today, medical uses of gold have expanded greatly.

It is used in surgery to patch damaged blood vessels, nerves, bones, and membranes. It is also used in the treatment of several forms of cancer. Injection of microscopic gold pellets helps retard prostate cancer in men. Women with ovarian cancer are treated with colloidal gold, and gold vapor lasers help seek out and destroy cancerous cells without harming their healthy neighbors. Every day, surgeons use gold instruments to clear coronary arteries, and gold -coated lasers give new life to patients with once inoperable heart conditions and tumors. Gold has become an important biomedical tool for scientists studying why the body behaves as it does.

By attaching a molecular marker to a microscopic piece of gold, scientists can follow its movement through the body. Because gold is readily visible under an electron microscope, scientists can now actually observe reactions in individual cells. Some researchers are placing gold on DNA to study the hybrid genetic material in cells. Others are using it to determine how cells respond to toxins, heat and physical stress.

Because it is biologically benign, biochemists use gold to form compounds with proteins to create new lifesaving drugs. Gold has been known down through the ages to have a direct effect on the activities of the heart, and helps to improve blood circulation. It is beneficial for rejuvenating sluggish organs, especially the brain and digestive system, and has been used in cases of glandular and nervous congestion and lack of coordination. The body's temperature stabilizing mechanism is restored to balance with gold, particularly in cases of chills, hot flashes, and night sweats.

Colloidal Gold has a balancing and harmonizing effect on all levels of body, mind, and spirit. It is used to improve mental attitude and emotional states. It has been reported to promote a feeling of increased energy, will power, mental focus and libido. According to many studies, colloidal gold increases mental acuity and the ability to concentrate. Colloidal gold is thought to strengthen mental function by increasing the conductivity between nerve endings in the body and on the surface of the brain. Gold is an all-natural mineral that is non-toxic and exhibits no interactions with other drugs, and is the only heavy metal that has a right-hand atomic spin and is therefore easily tolerated by the body.

The fabulous healing properties of gold are slowly but surely being rediscovered, as modern scientists and physicians uncover what the ancients seem to have known all along: That gold is indeed a very precious One of the oldest civilisations known to man, the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, who lived in what is modern-day Iran and Iraq, first used gold as sacred, ornamental, and decorative instruments in the fifth millennium B.C. Around the same period, the early Egyptians -the richest gold-producing civilisation of the ancient world - began the art of gold refining. Like the Sumerians, the Egyptians used gold primarily for personal adornment, rather than for monetary purposes, although the kings of the fourth to sixth dynasties (c. 2700-2270 B.C.) did issue some gold coins. The first large-scale, private issuance of pure gold coins was under King Croesus (560-546 B.C. ), the ruler of ancient Lydia, modern-day western Turkey. Stamped with his royal emblem of the facing heads of a lion and a bull, these first known coins eventually became the standard of exchange for worldwide trade and commerce. Source: The World Gold Council Gold is traditionally weighed in Troy Ounces (31.1035 gram mes).

It has a specific gravity of 19.3, meaning that it is 19.3 times heavier than water. So gold weighs 19.3 kilograms per litre. With the density of gold at 19.32 g / cm 3, a troy ounce of gold would have a volume of 1.64 cm 3. A tonne of gold would therefore have a volume of 51,760 cm 3, which would be equivalent to a cube of side 37.27 cm (Approx. 1' 3'). At the end of 2003, Gold Field Mineral Services (GEMS) estimated that above-ground stocks represented a total volume of approximately 150,500 tonnes, of which 61% had been mined since 1950.

All the gold ever mined would form a cube measuring only 19 m on each side. This cube would, for example, easily fit under the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The proportion of gold in jewellery is measured on the carat (or karat) scale. The word carat comes from the carob seed, which was originally used to balance scales in Oriental bazaars. Pure gold is designated 24 carat, which compares with the 'fineness' by which bar gold is defined. Pure gold Gold alloys Carat age Fineness % Gold 24 1000 100 22 916.7 91.67 18 750 75 14 583.3 58.3 10 416.7 41.67 9 375 37.5 The most widely used alloys for jewellery in Europe are 18 and 14 carat, although 9 carat is popular in the UK.

Portugal has a unique designation of 19.2 carats. In the United States 14 carat predominates, with some 10 carat. In the Middle East, India and South East Asia, jewellery is traditionally 22 carat (sometimes even 23 carat). In China, Hong Kong and some other parts of Asia, 'chuck k am' or pure gold jewellery of 990 fineness (almost 24 carat) is popular. The gold stored at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is secured in a most unusual vault. It rests on the bedrock of Manhattan Island - one of the few foundations considered adequate to support the weight of the vault, its door, and the gold inside - 80 feet below street level and 50 feet below sea level.

In the middle of 1997, the Fed^aEURTMs vault contained roughly 269 million troy ounces of gold (1 troy oz. is 1.1 times as heavy as the avoirdupois ounce, with which we are more familiar), representing 25 to 30 percent of the world^aEURTMs official monetary gold reserves. At the time, the vault gold^aEURTMs value was $11 billion at the official U.S. Government price of $42.2222 per troy ounce, or about $86 billion at the market price of $319 an ounce. One of the vault^aEURTMs gold bars (approximately 27.4 pounds) is valued at a $319 market price, about $127,000. The UK adopted a gold standard after the Napoleonic wars in the early part of the 19th century. In the second half of that century, a number of nations in Europe and elsewhere followed suit, though some for a time based their currencies on a bimetallic gold / silver standard.

The United States adopted the gold standard de facto in 1879, by making the 'greenbacks' that the Government had issued during the Civil War period convertible into gold; it then formally adopted the gold standard by legislation in 1900. By 1914, the gold standard had been accepted by a large number of countries, although it was certainly not universal. The 'gold specie's standard called for fixed exchange rates, with parities set for participating currencies in terms of gold, and provided that any paper currency could on demand be exchanged for gold specie at the central bank of issue. The system was designed to bring automatic adjustment in case of external deficits or surpluses in transactions between countries, that is, balance of payments imbalances. The underlying concept was that any deficit country would have to surrender gold to cover its deficit, with the result that the volume of its money would be reduced, leading to lower prices, while the influx of that gold into the surplus country would expand the volume of that country^aEURTMs money and lead to higher prices.

In the foreign exchange market, under the gold standard, exchange rates could, in principle, fluctuate only within very narrow limits determined by the costs of shipping and insuring gold. Thus, if U.S. residents accumulated pounds sterling as a result of exporting more goods and services to Britain than they imported and being paid in pounds for the excess, the U.S. holders of sterling had the option of converting pounds into gold at par value at the Bank of England and shipping the gold back to New York. During the 1880-1914 period, the 'mint parity' between the U.S. dollar and sterling was approximately $4.87, based on a U.S. official gold price of $20.67 per ounce and a U.K. official gold price of ^Alb 4.24 per ounce. The sterling / dollar exchange rate would not fluctuate beyond the 'gold points'-about three cents above and below the mint parity-which represented the cost of shipping and insuring gold, since at any exchange rate outside the gold points it would be possible to gain an arbitrage profit by converting currency into gold and shipping the gold to the other centre.

While some gold transfers actually took place under this system, such shipments frequently were avoided by monetary policy moves. In the example above, the U.K. might raise interest rates to attract capital inflows-i. e., increase the demand for sterling-and counterbalance the financial impact of the import excess. Higher interest rates also would have a deflationary effect in the deficit country. This automatic operation of the balance of payments adjustment process under the gold standard required, in theory, that in their financial policies, participating countries give an absolute priority to external adjustment over domestic objectives. This meant that in any periods of conflict between domestic and external objectives, policy tools might not be available to be used for domestic problems of recession, unemployment, or inflation. But the philosophy widely held in those pre-Keynesian times was that economies would tend naturally toward reasonably high levels of employment and reasonable price stability without such government policy actions.

For a forty-year period there were no changes in the exchange rates of the United States, UK, Germany, and France (though the same did not hold for a number of other countries). There were few barriers to gold shipments and few capital controls in the major countries. Capital flows generally seem to have played a stabilizing, rather than destabilizing, role. After the outbreak of the First World War, one combatant country after another suspended gold convertibility, and floating exchange rates prevailed. The United States, which entered the war late, maintained gold convertibility, but the dollar effectively floated against the other currencies, which were no longer convertible into dollars.

After the war, and in the early and mid-twenties, many exchange rates fluctuated sharply. Most currencies experienced substantial devaluations against the dollar; the U.S. currency had greatly improved its competitive strength over European currencies during the war, in line with the strengthening of the relative position of the U.S. economy. In Europe, especially in the UK, there was a widespread desire to return to the stability of the gold standard, and a worry about the growing attractiveness of the dollar-which was convertible into gold-and of dollar-denominated assets. Following a disastrous five years back on the gold standard, the UK abandoned it in 1931, and others followed over the next few years.

In 1933, US President Franklin Roosevelt imposed a ban on U.S. citizens^aEURTM buying, selling, or owning gold. While the U.S. Government continued to sell gold to foreign central banks and government institutions, the ban prevented hoarders from profiting after Congress devalued the dollar (in terms of gold) in January 1934. This action raised the official price of gold by more than 65 percent (from $20.67 to $35 per troy ounce). Gold coins and certificates considered collectors^aEURTM items were exempt from the prohibition, and artistic and industrial users of gold were permitted to deal in the metal under a special Treasury license. Gold at $35 set off a mining boom. US output rose from 2.6 m. oz in 1933 to 4.4 m. oz in 1936, and peaked at 6.0 m. oz in 1940 (not equalled until 1988).

Canada hit 5.5 m. oz in 1941 (best until 1991). World output up from 20 m. oz to 38.6 m. oz by 1940. In 1971 President Richard Nixon ended US dollar convertibility to gold and the central role of gold in world currency systems ended. The dollar and gold floated and in January 1980 the gold price hit a record of $850 per ounce against a background of an international crisis arising from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Gold is chemically very stable. It does not readily combine with other substances and, therefore, does not corrode or tarnish. Because of this property, it is found in nature almost always as pure gold. This is referred to as 'native gold'. This meant that the early humans could collect the gold and use it without having to smelt or refine the metal from a mineral - such is the case of iron.

Also, because Gold is soft and does not tarnish or corrode, it makes excellent jewellery, it is good as material for filling cavities in teeth, and it makes excellent fine wire for electronics. Gold is very reflective, so it is used to protect spacecraft and satellites from solar radiation. Industrial and medical lasers use gold-coated reflectors to focus light energy. Vital role of gold mining in the economies of Central Asia and Russia highlighted by new report.

LONDON: Thursday, 15 November 2001 - Gold mining will have an increasingly important role in the development of some former Soviet republics and several of them, especially those in Central Asia, have the potential to become some of the world's largest producers. The Kyrgyz Republic, the Russian Federation and Uzbekistan are already among the world's top twenty gold producing countries with gold accounting for over a third of the Kyrgyz Republic's exports and 6% of Uzbekistan's. There is substantial potential for further increases in gold production in these three countries and also in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, it is reported in a new study published in London today by the World Gold Council on the eve of an important conference in Berlin on Challenges for Europe: the Euro, the Dollar and Gold organised by the Council. Extractive industries already play a major role in several economies in central Asia, often accounting for 30-50% of total output.

Some of these countries are among the poorest in the world with annual GDP per head under $500. Realising the potential of their natural resources including gold is crucial to their further development. New mine development in central Asia has often been held back by the lack of foreign investment. Foreign investors have been reluctant to commit funds for new mining developments in these countries because of an unfavourable business climate, economic and political difficulties and in some cases the remote and harsh environment where many gold deposits are located, it is said in the report.

Efforts are now being made to improve the business environment and more realistic privatisation rules are being implemented but a number of gold mining developments were stopped when the price of gold fell in the late 1990's. Russia, which is currently the world's sixth largest gold producer, has the potential to double its output over the next five years to around 300 tonnes a year. Russia has more than 1,000 tonnes of gold in low grade resources in Siberia and Russian geologists have identified deposits in the Far East economic region which are estimated to contain around 650 tonnes of gold. Political issues have delayed development of the Siberian deposits, but the authorities in the Far East region have been more successful in concluding deals with foreign investors and several new mines are now in production or about to start. The study entitled 'Golden Road - the importance of gold mining in the CIS and Eastern Europe' is the fourth in a series of studies commissioned by the World Gold Council into the importance of gold mining to different areas of the world. The countries covered in the report produced 285 tonnes of gold in 2000, equal to 11% of world.

The three previous studies looked at the situation in sub-Saharan Africa and the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries, gold's importance to countries in Latin America, and to countries in the Far East. This latest report was prepared by Dr Mina Toksoz, an international economist with wide experience of Emerging Europe and the Middle East from her work at the Economist Intelligence Unit between 1985 and 1997 and, more recently, in the London banking and securities industry. In this report Dr Toksoz focuses on the Balkan states of Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia, Russia and Central Asia. She reviews current gold mining activities in each of the countries studied, indicates their potential for new production and outlines reasons why development has been slow to start in many countries, ten years after the break-up of the Soviet Union.