Gold, for ages, has represented wealth, even thousands of years ago; gold was considered precious and kept carefully as one’s property. It remains expensive even today because it is scarce, is very useful, and can be kept and used in the form of ornaments or coins etc. which can be converted back into a good amount of money anywhere in the world.
Gold remains very dear to humankind because of its many
remarkable properties. It is representative of the noble metals that are metals that do not change on the surface, don’t get rusted, retain their lustre,
and do not dissolve in ordinary acids or alkalies.
A gold
nugget not larger than a match head can be drawn out into a wire more than
three kilometres long. To make jewellery, pure good is made harder by adding a
small quantity of copper, silver, nickel, etc.
Gold is used
for technical purposes and scientific experiments. In electronics, it is
used for the transistors and diodes. It is also used in dental work. Geologists
believe that the earth’s crust alone contains about a hundred thousand million
tons of gold, and about ten thousand million tons of it are present in the
oceans. Only part of this has been taken out from the earth by man. It is expensive
and difficult to get from its sources, and this keeps the price high and
tempts men to grab more and more of it.
Where is the largest gold mine?
The largest
gold-producing region on earth today is in South Africa, near the city of Johannesburg.
This area produces as much as about half of the world’s supply of gold which
sometimes has been over 1,000 tons.
The East
Rand Mines are the largest single group of gold mines in South Africa and
cover an area of 12,000 acres. The largest mine of this group has tunnels that
stretch for more than 2,500 miles underground.