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Marble reacts with almost anything, gold and nickel is the last thing to react. Elementary school chemistry: Gold is the least reactive metal

• human 5y ago
  This. And I always laugh when people say gold has no value. It’s literally the best metal known to mankind. The reason why it’s not used much is because of its price.
  • Smoosh 5y ago
    > It’s literally the best metal For some particular values of "best". As gold is rather malleable (soft), these plates would probably scratch easily.
  • bjowen 5y ago
    There’s a lesson here in what “value” means. But - try to handle some fine gold one day. It is lustrous, but also incredibly easy to dent - drop it and it’ll scratch like a 2010s-era phone. It is easy to work, but won’t hold its shape. If we had oceans of the stuff, we still wouldn’t use it to make a car or a laptop or a pistol or a building, it would take the place of lead in things like counterweights and radiation shielding, maybe home insulation or cooking foil, places where its softness and density aren't too much of a drawback but the low reactivity is beneficial.
    • human 5y ago
      Yes, of course, it’s not for all cases. One interesting thing though with gold is that it can be melted and reworked basically forever. This means that if you own gold today, your great-great-great-grandchildren could still be using it in 1000 years. This is not true of most materials. Gold’s value is basically the present value of all future uses.
• shakna 5y ago
  > Elementary school chemistry: Gold is the least reactive metal Yet another case of elementry school chemistry over-simplifying and getting things wrong. Silver and platinum compete with gold, even if you stay within the realm of elementary school definitions of metal.
  • patrec 5y ago
    Let me guess, you don't own any silverware?
    • shakna 5y ago
      I have both goldware and silverware. But that's pretty much irrelevant, as they're alloys. Platinum is the least reactive of the things people recognise as metals.
      • patrec 5y ago
        You're right that silverware will tarnish much more quickly because of the addition of copper (and possibly other metals) -- so a bad example from me. But whilst pure silver is much more resilient to tarnishing, it will still slowly tarnish because even normal indoor air is prone to contain trace amounts of gasses with sulfur like hydrogen sulfide, which will react with the silver. Whereas I don't think pure gold does. My guess would also be that most people who had school chemistry would order the silver, gold and platinum correctly in terms of their relative reactivity (and value) because this replicates exactly the order of fanciness of credit cards, record sales etc.