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Gold Facts & Worksheets

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and has the atomic number of 79, making it one of the elements with a higher atomic number that forms naturally.

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Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and has the atomic number of 79, making it one of the elements with a higher atomic number that forms naturally. Gold is a bright, dense, malleable, and ductile metal in its purest form. It is less reactive than other chemical elements. Gold is solid under standard conditions. Gold often occurs in its free elemental, native form, as nuggets or grains, in rocks, in veins, and alluvial deposits. In the periodic table, gold is a transition metal and a group 11 element.

See the fact file below for more information on the gold or alternatively, you can download our 21-page Gold worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

ETYMOLOGY

  • The word Gold comes from the Anglo-Saxon term for yellow which is geolo.
  • The symbol Au is from the Latin word aurum, the Latin word for “gold”.
  • The Proto-Indo-European ancestor of aurum means “glow”.
  • This word came from the same root meaning “to dawn”, derived from the Latin word Aurora, “dawn”.
  • Therefore, the word aurum could mean “Shining Dawn.”

PHYSICAL PROPERTIES AND CHEMICAL COMPONENTS

  • Gold is considered to be the most malleable of all metals.
  • Gold can be drawn into a monatomic wire, and then stretched out twice before the monoatomic wire breaks.
  • Gold can be hammered into a leaf and be beaten enough to become transparent.
  • Gold strongly reflects red and yellow, and as a result, the light transmitted by gold appears to be greenish-blue.
  • Tungsten, another metal, has been used to make counterfeit or fake gold bars.
  • This is because gold has a density of 19.3 g/cm3 – a density that is almost identical to tungsten, which is 19.25 g/cm3.
  • Gold bars have been faked by either plating a bar of tungsten with gold, or drilling holes to a real gold bar and filling the holes with tungsten rods.
  • In terms of color, gold is outstanding for its yellow-red color in comparison with most metals that are gray or silvery-white.

HISTORY

  • Gold, in prehistoric times, can be found free or “native,” as a result, gold was the earliest recorded metal employed by humans.
  • In Spanish caves, small amounts of natural gold have been found.
  • The gold that was found was used during the late Paleolithic period (about 40,000 BC).
  • The oldest Gold artifacts are recorded to first appear at the very beginning of the predynastic period in Egypt, at the end of the fifth millennium BC, which was also the start of the fourth.
  • Smelting, the process of extracting metal from its ore that involves heat and melting, was developed during the 4th millennium. As a result, gold artifacts appear in the land of Lower Mesopotamia during the early 4th millennium.
  • Similar to Mesopotamia, gold artifacts in the Balkans appear from the 4th millennium BC, just like the ones that were found in the Varna Necropolis near Lake Varna in Bulgaria, which is believed to be the earliest “well-dated” find of gold artifacts.
  • Gold artifacts found at the Nahal Qanah cave cemetery of the 4th millennium BC in Palestine (occupied West Bank) were the earliest from the Levant in the 1990s.
  • Gold artifacts such as the golden hats and the Nebra disk appeared in Central Europe from the 2nd millennium BC Bronze Age.

USES

  • Gold has been widely used globally as money for efficient indirect exchange in contrast to barter, in which a product should be in exchange for a product, and to store wealth in hoards.
  • For exchange purposes, mints produce standardized gold bullion coins, bars, and other units of fixed weight and purity.
  • The earliest coins made up of an alloy of silver and gold are found and minted in the kingdom of Lydia and Asia Minor around 600 BC.
  • 24 karat gold is exceptionally soft and alloyed with base metals in order to be used for jewelry.
  • These alloys decrease the karat rating of gold, usually into 22k, 18k, 14k, or 10k.
  • These base metals were usually copper, silver, or palladium.
  • By 2014, the gold jewelry industry was escalating even though the price of gold decreased.
  • In the first quarter of 2014, the demand for gold pushed turnover to $23.7 billion according to a World Gold Council report.
  • The electronics industry also utilizes gold and builds up 10% of gold consumption.
  • The most important industrial use for new gold is in the fabrication of corrosion-free electrical connectors in computers and other electrical devices.

Gold Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about gold across 21 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Gold worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about the Budapest which is the gold which is a chemical element with the symbol Au and has the atomic number of 79, making it one of the elements with a higher atomic number that forms naturally. Gold is a bright, dense, malleable, and ductile metal in its purest form. It is less reactive than other chemical elements. Gold is solid under standard conditions. Gold often occurs in its free elemental, native form, as nuggets or grains, in rocks, in veins, and alluvial deposits. In the periodic table, gold is a transition metal and a group 11 element.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • Gold Facts
  • Fact or Forged?
  • Spot The Gold
  • Made of Gold
  • Rainbow Myth
  • Shared Characteristics
  • History of Gold
  • Gold Uses Checklist
  • Fool’s Gold
  • My Golden Creation
  • Once Upon A Time

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Link will appear as Gold Facts & Worksheets: https://kidskonnect.com - KidsKonnect, August 19, 2019

Use With Any Curriculum

These worksheets have been specifically designed for use with any international curriculum. You can use these worksheets as-is, or edit them using Google Slides to make them more specific to your own student ability levels and curriculum standards.

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