Here is a brief description of gold.

* Standard state: solid at 298 K
* Colour: gold
* Classification: Metallic
* 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 purchased from Advent Research Materials via their web catalogue.

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. 4Au + 8NaCN + O2 + 2H2O ? 4Na[Au(CN)2] + 4NaOH 2Na[Au(CN)2] + Zn ? 2NaCN + Zn(CN)2 + Au (s)