3 ms·
Just do what Archimedes suggested. ;)
by SapphireSun 12y ago
Just do what Archimedes suggested. ;)
- analog31 12y agoWhat, run up and down the street naked, yelling Eureka? Actually, I'm agreed that you could measure the density, but somebody could fiddle with the density too by adding just a touch of this or that to bring everything up to the right weight.
- SapphireSun 12y agoYou could always take small core samples and run them through mass spec.
- imaginenore 12y agoYou suggest to drill every gold bar, thus ruining the certification?
- SapphireSun 12y agoRandom sample. I'm not familiar with gold bars, but I imagine that there are procedures for this (like rectifying at a new weight or recasting the sampled bars). A few milligrams of gold shouldn't be a big deal unless we're dealing with gold fever. If you're willing to melt them down though, you probably don't have to deal with mass spec as some property will have to give (melting point, density, etc).
- diroussel 12y agoWhere 'this or that' can only be something more dense than gold, which are not cheap: http://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10+densest+elements http://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10+densest+elements
- analog31 12y agoAha, I didn't look up the densities.
- imaginenore 12y agoYou can't determine if the gold bar is salted by only measuring its density. It's pretty easy to create a mix of gold, tungsten and osmium to have the exact same density as pure gold.