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What liquids are gold soluble in, and how much gold could you dissolve per litre?
by GordonS 3y ago
What liquids are gold soluble in, and how much gold could you dissolve per litre?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoAqua regia. Famously used to dissolve Nobel prizes to hide them from the Nazis[0] When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of German physicists Max von Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925) in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from confiscating them. The German government had prohibited Germans from accepting or keeping any Nobel Prize after jailed peace activist Carl von Ossietzky had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935. De Hevesy placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation. They re-cast the medals and again presented them to Laue and Franck.[12][13] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_regia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_regia
- GordonS 3y agoWow, that's actually pretty cool!