15 Most Surprising Things You Never Knew About Gold

generally speaking we know an awful lot about gold though concentrated deposits are hard to come by we know that it's shiny we know that it's valuable and we know that tacky rich people use it to cover basically every inch of their home pretty good huh it's double what we did last year but there's even more that we don't know about this famous medal from its culinary appeal to its seemingly indestructible nature here are the 15 most surprising things you never knew about gold number 15 it's edible while you probably shouldn't just start going to town on a big block of solid gold it's actually perfectly okay to eat small slivers of authentic gold in fact the ingredient is hugely popular in many high-end restaurants and then we have a gold butter and the flavor for the wings is actually a honey chipotle taste which really begs the question how much money do they have admittedly the human race has always had the unusual habit of eating pretty much anything we stumble upon but historically humans would digest tiny slivers of gold in the hopes of treating medical conditions like arthritis and syphilis as opposed to general tastiness presumably the reasoning behind that was that by consuming 24 karat gold you two would get a 24 carat body i'm not totally sure the science is there but it's worth a try regardless today people are still consuming gold leaf and flakes in hopes of hemopathically rebalancing their bodies purifying it of all toxins and boosting the immune system however i have seen food critics and 24-carat body is not how i would describe them the sad thing is that most people aren't aware that gold is edible because frankly they simply couldn't afford to taste it at those high-end restaurants for those of us who are broke we'll just have to settle for consuming gold jewelry that was a joke please don't do that before we go on like this video smash the subscribe button and click the notification bell right now or slenderman will come from under your bed when you're sleeping [Music] number 14 a noble medal we should probably clarify some terms here scientists rarely use the word noble to mean brave although i would argue that all metals are somewhat brave given that they give up willingly or not their own existence in the interest of science and or cars instead the scientific use of the word actually refers to a metal that basically holds its shape and cannot be destroyed by chemicals no matter what doesn't sound very noble to me in the case of gold this is a metal that is practically indestructible while it's possible to turn gold into a liquid or solid form and probably a gas form too none of these transitions actually destroy or even affect the metal in any notable way gold just adapts to whatever form it's in and somehow never deteriorates in the process while most metals will begin to corrode as a result of oxidization the genetic material of gold essentially makes this impossible it's basically indestructible all of this means that you can never really ruin or destroy gold which should make you feel slightly better about getting your jewelry dirty thanks to its makeup gold is one of a handful of metals to be utterly immune to the tragic effects of aging we must consume it immediately number 13 earthquakes the midas touch those that believe will tell you that jesus could turn water into wine that's a pretty incredible thing to do but did you know that earthquakes also can turn water into gold this makes it easier to mine the gold inside the ground at lower costs it may sound like a joke but we're not kidding at all a real study proves it so can you just go to the beach and wait right now that we've gotten rid of the scientists a 2013 study revealed that in the midst of an earthquake the water in the fault line vaporizes leaving behind precious gold in its wank that's right earthquakes are basically gold factories here's how it works during an earthquake the aggressive shaking of the ground forces the already present faults to open even wider that in turn causes the water inside to immediately vaporize with the heat turning the liquid into steam and forcing the minerals within to run out onto the nearby surfaces those minerals include gold and silica which helps to form the mineral quartz together they give you the beautiful crystallized gold you see here it's very simple if you already know everything about it it's incredible to think that this is a relatively new discovery and that many scientists were not even aware of this theory just 10 years ago maybe it's time for a school trip to an earthquake felt line number 12 it's everywhere we don't mean everywhere as in it's in all the stores it is but that's not what we're talking about in this case gold has a unique paradox attributed to it that few other metals can match it can be found on all seven continents on the planet and if it's dancing a little bit the gold can work its way down and they will grab hold of the flying gold yet there is less gold on earth than any other metal what are the chances of that the largest known deposits of gold can be found on the continents of africa and asia specifically south africa and india for south africa johannesburg has the fortune of being built over the world's largest gold deposit which is kind of like being born inside of a bank vault india meanwhile is home to the world's second deepest underground gold mine the champion reef mine if you're sitting there thinking ha second best it's probably worth remembering that there's more money inside that single mine than in your lifelong bank account now who's second best huh while africa and asia make up the world's largest gold deposits this is an element that has been found on every single continent in the world it's likely that if you got the right equipment even you could find some gold buried deep under the earth's surface although if you have the money to get the right equipment you don't really need gold number 11 you are gold yes the rumors are true you the viewer of our video have traces of gold within your body now before you start with the crazy i'm a 24 karat person comments the more gold parker mines the higher percentage let's just take a step back and clarify these traces are less than microscopic and they're all centralized in one specific area and no it's not the one you want it to be in 2012 a scientific study reported the first known case of gold nanoparticles being found in human hair scientists found that around forty thousand to sixty thousand of the particles could fit across the width of just a single follicle now just factor in how many hairs you have on your head and you have the makings of a jewelry store the discovery has apparently allowed scientists to explore what they call uses for the nanoparticles which is one of the stranger things i have heard from a scientist but okay soon you too will be able to use your hair to charge your phone don't quote me on that blame science for such a valuable and expensive medal it does seem something of a waste to put so much of it in human hair but this may be yet another reason that i'm not creating an entire human race if it were up to me we'd be made of mozzarella and we'd be tasty too number 10 we're running out considering that it's the world's most popular and most valuable medal it's probably not all that surprising to know that most of the world's gold resources have already been mined in fact the world gold council yep that's a real thing has estimated that around 77 of the gold on earth has already been recovered sorry guys for the past few years financial experts and gold enthusiasts have been warning that our planet was heading for what they were calling peak gold a point at which our gold resources would begin to dwindle until we finally hit zero production and run out of gold these experts now claim that since the first piece of gold was successfully mined humans have recovered around 165 000 metric tons of this metal though that number is notably questionable after all how do you keep track of a whole bunch of gold bars and some tacky looking jewelry there's just too many billionaires to contact nobody can be sure how much gold is left buried underground though it's known that there is no shortage on the planet some theories claim that there's enough gold in the core of our planet to cover the entire surface of the earth with a four meter thick layering now that would be tacky number nine world's first vending machine i'm not going to say that rich people are using technology wrong but rich people are definitely using technology in a weird weird way for all of the good they could easily do with the money that they have instead we get this the world's first vending machine for gold bars what a gift to the world the vending machine is open for business at the emirates palace in the uae and it's about as stupid as you would expect visitors can purchase 1 5 or 10 gram bars or if you're cheap a one ounce bar imagine it for just two hundred dollars you could buy yourself a five grand bar of gold that you can't really do anything with it better come in a box guys that's it what an incredible life-changing experience one of the people that made this thing possible explained the motive behind it explaining that it brings gold to the public it demystifies it well i for one am glad to find out that gold is not in fact the mythical legend that i never really thought it was sadly most of us will just have to find some way to go on living without stashing solid gold bars around our homes but we applaud the uae for demystifying something that absolutely nobody was confused about do potatoes next number eight a carrot everybody has heard of the carrot 24 karat 8 carrot orange carrot but nobody really knows what it is well except for the orange carrot which we now know is bugs bunny's favorite snack the story behind the carrot is actually a surprising one which is lucky because that's the title of the video centuries ago ancient merchants in the middle east would sell their wares using an ancient unit of measurement called the carrot one carrot weighs around 200 milligrams the exact weight of the carob seed that gave this unit of measurement its name how that came to be who the hell knows but at some point the measurement became more synonymous with weighing gemstones and jewels as opposed to general goods when exactly that happened nobody really knows in fact nobody really knows anything about any of this which is surprising in its own right very few people are actually aware that a carrot is a unit of measurement as opposed to some kind of genetic or material makeup but the good news is that we can bring it back if enough of us commit to using beans as units of measurement if we just had around 300 committed green beans we could make it happen if you're with me drop your favorite mr bean in the comments number 7 world's most expensive coin it sounds pretty pointless to suggest that anybody would actually pay for a single coin but as we've often established on this channel rich people seem to be a whole other species take for example this coin admittedly it's not just any old coin it's the world's most expensive coin this coin is a rock star in the national numismatic collection but prepare for your eyes to water when you find out just how expensive this one single coin is the coin in question is the 1933 saint godden's double eagle and it has something of a history in collector's markets many people have questioned the legality of the coin and whether or not it should even be allowed to be privately owned however when it went up for auction in new york in 2002 none of those minor controversies really mattered while pretty much everybody expected the coin to bring in a few million nobody expected the winning bid to be quite as high as it was the double eagle bought in 7.59 million beating the previous world record of 4.14 million for a single u.s coin it's fair to say that most of us would not dare pay anywhere near that much for one coin it's also fair to say that most of us quite literally couldn't but mostly we wouldn't because it's one coin not the entire country of luxembourg number six gold melting point most of us know the boiling point of water or the freezing point of water or well we know what water is basically but do you know what the melting point of gold is apparently not many people do well prepare to be shocked okay prepare to be mildly impressed in case you couldn't work it out from the very basic name the melting point of any material is the temperature at which it transforms from a solid state to a liquid stain that temperature tends to vary from material to material for example an aspirin melts at 275 degrees fahrenheit if you've ever wondered about aspirin as i do on a nightly basis sometimes with nightmares however most metals tend to melt around 1500 degrees fahrenheit or so and gold requires even more heat about 500 degrees more to be specific gold melts at 2063 degrees fahrenheit making it one of the most resilient and demanding metals on the planet this would also explain why liquid gold is basically the chemical equivalent of magma one accidental touch and you've completely lost a finger or you've turned into a bond villain i suppose it depends on your perspective number five conductor of electricity like most metals gold is a particularly good conductor of electricity however it's easy to understand why there are so few electrical goods made of gold it doesn't make much sense to use such an expensive metal for basic electrical items generally speaking gold is most often used as plating for conductors because it's incredibly difficult to corrode or ruin that resiliency means that gold can retain its conductiveness for a more extended period however there is a problem here while gold is easily one of the best materials to use for conducting electricity it's hugely expensive and that kind of cost means that mass producing gold infused electrical equipment would be unprofitable for many companies and as anyone with a basic knowledge of capitalism knows if something isn't profitable it should be banned until we can make it profitable let us know about your radical financial beliefs below if you're so inclined just try and link it to gold ultimately copper and silver are slightly better at conducting electricity than gold which is probably for the best still bet you didn't know any of this five minutes ago hey stay gold kids number four welcome stranger i can almost guarantee that none of you have ever heard of the welcome stranger while it does admittedly sound a little bit suggestive it's actually not named after a person whatsoever the welcome stranger is the largest alluvial golden nugget ever found in 1896 while fishing for jewels and gemstones john deeson and richard oates discovered a massive 73 kilogram gold nugget hidden just inches beneath the surface of an old victorian goldfields town the story goes that the nugget was so big that it had to be broken up using an anvil just so they could weigh it however because the chunk had to be broken up there are no photos of the find and all sketches portraying it had to be drawn from memory but not willing to be mentioned in the newspaper without a picture for their troubles decent and oats were sure to pose at the discovery site with a big chunk of quartz as a substitute well i guess if you can't get a photo with george clooney a photo with a dvd of fantastic mr fox is the next best thing the record of the welcome stranger has not been broken since 1896 meaning that this legendary nugget is still the largest ever found anyway if anybody would like to see a photo of me with a george clooney dvd let me know number three olympic gold medals pretty much anybody that's ever watched coverage of the olympic games will have had the exact same question at some point are the medals made of real gold and how much could i get if i sold one on ebay well the answer really depends on your seller rating as well as the quality of your feedback also no they're not real gold mostly in actuality there hasn't been a pure gold medal handed out at the olympics since stockholm in 1912. the medals at every game since are primarily made up of gilded silver which does somewhat undermine the whole gold medal thing however before you start sending angry letters to the olympic council we should clarify that they're not entirely gold-less olympic bylaws actually legally require that the gold medals contain at least 6 grams of pure gold presumably so it doesn't feel completely fake but it is mostly fake and as for the money question it's much less than you'd expect given that only 6 grams of the metal is actually made of real gold and the other 394 grams are made of 0.925 silver we end up with a value of around 686. yup less than your car who's the real winner here usain bolt or you yeah usain bolt i'm sorry that's on you number two state minerals you may not have known much about the other stuff on this list but you almost definitely will know something about the gold rush of the mid-1800s even if it's just the image of old bearded men heading into the caves with their pickaxes one thing you probably didn't know however is that the gold is the state mineral of california and alaska yes state minerals are a thing now and in this room are approximately 150 000 mineral specimens while the gold rush no doubt killed many many men due to the toxic and unforgiving conditions of working in a mine it also brought prosperity and a whole lot of money to the states involved it also wiped out a devastating percentage of the indigenous native american population but history doesn't much care to acknowledge that kind of thing for alaska and california the gold rush basically changed everything making these two states keep players in the revival of america's economy and in true american style those that did the work got none of the profit while those that sat and watched from cushy offices got pretty much all of it california and alaska proudly bear gold as their representative state mineral due to their significant deposits in their states incidentally so does north carolina but what have they ever done to get into the history books number one london gold bank it's not a bank made out of gold don't get your hopes up if you come to this one hoping for some vagus level trashiness in the uk you're going to be sorely disappointed the london bank of england gold vault is the second largest gold repository in the world behind the new york federal reserve kind of dull huh what makes the bank of england's stash stand out partly because it's rare so it's in limited supply you can't keep making it is just how transparent they are about their holdings while most countries tend to keep their cards fairly close to their chest the british have taken the very unusual step of publishing monthly updates allowing everyone to see just how much gold they have in their vault and it's a lot in 2019 the bank confirmed that it was holding around 400 000 gold bars somewhere around 200 billion pounds worth that's not quite scrooge mcduck levels of gold hoarding but honestly i'd be surprised if the employees didn't try and dive into it a few times a day while the bank of england is transparent about their holdings they're obviously not brave enough to allow tourists inside even the least criminal among us would probably try and sneak out of those secure doors pants sagging at our ankles from the weight of the gold bars wedged into our pockets a boy can dream canty did you know any of these golden facts or were they all brand new to you let us know in the comments also check out our other cool stuff showing up on the screen right now see you next time

Channel: Amerikano

Views: 463,768

Keywords: facts, gold, gold facts, about gold, interesting facts, science, surprising facts, gold rush, gold mines, gold bar, gold coins, secrets, gold documentary, science facts, gold design, gold dust, gold detector, gold extraction, Things You Never Knew About Gold, Gold, top facts, Gold Facts, Facts about Gold, gold information, gold nuggets, Gold Bar, Most Valuable Coin, Fascinating Facts About Gold, made of gold, golden

Id: WVImIwlc_v0

Length: 23min 8sec (1388 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020