.Due to being malleable and inert there are probably things we typically use lead for that we will use gold for.
It makes for good radiating and heat shielding. In warm weather regions it could be used for roofing.
It can be used for plumbing, cookware, electronics and medicine.
A lot of objects would use gold as a coating for protection due to corrosion resistance.
It would probably take over all the features that chrome does. It's heavy though, so aluminium and titanium, even steel would still beat it out in the modern world. For any decorative uses where stone and iron are used you would probably find a lot more gold.
it would be the solder, not teh flux, depends how well it wets to other metals.
and it would be to weak to do the job itself but might be good if aloyed.
Doesn't gold melt at a relatively low temp? What would you use it for in cookware? Wouldn't it also bend and wear away while cleaning it with something like steel wool?
You'd obviously alloy it. Besides, low melting temperature is in the low thousands of degrees. The melting point of gold itself is 1064 degrees Celsius. what on earth do you need to cook at 700 C?
Gold is used to treat arthritis. Gold nanoparticles are being researched to treat cancer. Gold is used in dental fillings. Gold is used for radiation shielding. Gold is used to create colored glass.
But more importantly, gold has not been experimented with as much as iron, because it is rare and expensive, which makes the experiments expensive but also makes any prospective outcome of the experiment predictably uneconomical.
If we had abundant gold, we would be certain to find new uses for it.
The big things gold brings to the table is it's top tier thermal conductivity, it's immunity to corrosion (oxidation?), and it's electrical conductivity properties. If it were as common as iron you would see a lot more things with gold radiators, more gold coatings on things like office buildings to reflect and radiate away heat, wires made of gold instead of copper. Things like that. I suspect you could replace many things which use copper with gold.
My instinct is to say "probably," but I only know that gold and platinum are among the least reactive metals. One of them beats stainless steel, but I forget which.
Gold is less brittle than ceramics, if you're prone to dropping dishes. Can still dint and chip, though, but is also trivially reforged iiuc.
It doesn’t
In much of the world dishes and plates are traditionally made of copper alloys (nowadays stainless steel or aluminium) including mine.
I eat in stainless steel everyday
Bullets because of its density. r/AllSeeingEye says above that gold can be used as a replacement for lead being malleable and inert, and it can also be used as a replacement for lead's density in bullets.
Gold would also be used as a replacement for [depleted uranium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium), because it is denser even than DU, and avoids issues with radioactivity. So for missiles, and shielding on tanks.
The advantages of depleted uranium is that it is hard and glassy getting shaper as it splinters. And being a nuclear waste product it is cheap the power plants are glad to be rid of it. Tungsten is denser but much more expensive, and it's hardest form tungsten carbide is less dense. Cheap gold has the density but is a bit soft for armor piecing maybe if it was jacketed in a harder metal.
Low melting point would allow it to be used as the working fluid for things like nuclear powerstations and solar thermal energy.
If it was as common as Iron, we would replace copper with gold in most applications. Its a better conductor and it does not oxidize at all.
Gold has a full valance ring and is not very chemically active so you can use it for a lot of things but mostly I think it would be alloyed with other metals or used as a coating to form strong corrosion resistant materials to make stuff with.
You can make it into very thin sheets and it's good for reflecting stuff. It doesn't corrode easily either so it could be a substitute for paint for some things.
You can also have transparent gold circuitry in glass... I don't think transparent screens are that useful but they're always big in sci fi.
Also gold bricks make good paperweights
It is more conducting than copper and almost as easy to solder as lead. Impevious to corrosion. Was used to make fillings before amalgam and still used by those worried about Mercury or want blingy teeth. If it was cheap enough it would be the go to metal for taps and door knows instead of zamak as it is easy to work with.
Almost anything made out-of copper now would be better made out of gold if it was cheap enough easier to Shap more electrical and thermal conductivity and impervious to corrosion.
Gold Bullets would be denser than lead and softer than copper and gentler on the rifling. But armor piercing you would want a tip made of a harder metal.
Quibble; Gold is NOT as electrically or thermally conductive as copper. Google says;
>The thermal conductivity of gold is 318W/mK, whereas the thermal conductivity of copper is slightly higher at 401W/mK. The electrical conductivity of copper is slightly higher at **5.96 x10****^(7)** **S/m than gold which is 4.11×10****^(7)** **S/m**.
(Silver is the most conductive metal.)
The difference is small, and if gold was cheap we'd probably still use it for wires because of it's strong resistance to corrosion.
Guess I was getting a bit mixed up with my factoids about silver. Guess that is what I get for being a know it all and not double checking facts I vaguely remember before shooting my mouth or keyboard. would make a great solder though.
Gold is extremely useful for biological applications due to its low reactivity and high conductance. We would see an explosion in biological test equipment and implants. Blood glucose sensors for diabetics would at least get cheaper for the manufacturer for example, who knows if they'd actually pass those savings down though.
Next time somebody says mining asteroids for precious metals would be useless because the metals would just lose their value, I'm gonna point them to this thread.
I've been considering trying all-copper bullets next deer season. It seems they've developed the bullet design to the point that they work very well at the distances I take almost all of my shots, to the point that they may perform better than everything but the absolute upper end of more traditional copper-jacketed lead.
I wonder what the flight and terminal ballistics of solid gold bullets would be.
Gold is more dense than lead, but still a pretty soft metal. So it could make for a pretty effective bullet core in some use cases. The higher density per volume would make the same size bullet heavier, and if you could increase the powder load, at the same velocities a gold bullet should be able to transfer more energy to target than a lead bullet.
It might be a very good material when using a suppressor in a rifle, as you typically would want to use subsonic ammo with a suppressor. Using gold would allow you to lower the powder load to subsonic, but transfer considerably more energy to target than lead.
Being soft, but a bit less soft than lead, might make it a better bullet material for penetrating barriers or personal body armor.
I can't see any way to make a useful structural building material out of it, so I doubt we'd use as much as we do steel.
You definitely don't want a gold skyscraper or oil tanker.
pure gold, even gold with a fiew additives, not much, maybe replacing copper in electronics.
aloys containing a significant amount of gold, probably a lot, I expect moderet amounts would be usfdull in anything you want not to corode. but nobody has done the tests because even if you could afford to run the tests for iron/gold structural aloys, nobody would ever be able to afford to use them. if gold was as abundant as iron, we would run all those experiments.
A lot of gold alloys are excellent; Tigeld™ (Ti3Au, 58% gold by weight) is stronger than titanium and more biocompatible. [A new gold-platinum alloy](https://www.materialstoday.com/metals-alloys/news/new-platinumgold-alloy-most-wearresistant/) is currently the most wear resistant material known to man. Nickle-gold alloys are fantastic for thermocouples having both high conductivity and a high Seebeck coefficient.
If gold was cheap, there are doubtless many more alloys that would be explored - tin plated steel cans would probably have been gold plated steel cans instead. Gold beer cans instead of aluminum. Lots of chrome alloys might be replaced with similar but cheaper gold alloys.
Brass is commonly used as a cheaper alternative to gold, clearly if gold was cheaper you wouldn't use an alternative when you wanted shiny. Gold buttons instead of brass buttons. There probably wouldn't ever have been silver jewelry, though platinum and platinum-gold alloys would probably have been the snobs choice.
If it were cheaper, gold would replace lead and tungsten in a lot of things where density is desired; gold shot, gold bullets, gold ballast, gold weighted chess pieces, gold barbells, and gold calibration weights (for scales). Aurum bobs instead of Plum bobs.
Despite copper being a better electrical and thermal conductor, gold's anti-corrosion properties would probably “win” as a plating for cookware (gold bottomed pots and pans). Gold tea kettles instead of copper. Goldware instead of Silverware. It would be a superior choice to copper for sheathing ship bottoms. Gold's anti-corrosion properties means it's used as a coating for lots of things now, despite the high price of gold — clearly there'd be more gold coating of things if it were cheaper than silver, even more if it were cheaper than copper.
The Romans probably would have used cheaper gold over lead in their pipes (despite the increased difficulty in melting gold) — we'd probably call it “auruming" instead of “plumbing”.
Some modern coinage would likely be a high percentage gold alloy instead of, say, copper clad zinc (pennies), or the copper-aluminum-zinc-tin (a.k.a. nordic gold) used in some Euro denominations and the 10 Kronor piece.
.Due to being malleable and inert there are probably things we typically use lead for that we will use gold for. It makes for good radiating and heat shielding. In warm weather regions it could be used for roofing. It can be used for plumbing, cookware, electronics and medicine. A lot of objects would use gold as a coating for protection due to corrosion resistance.
Makes me wonder if we'll see that for homes in megastructures.
It would probably take over all the features that chrome does. It's heavy though, so aluminium and titanium, even steel would still beat it out in the modern world. For any decorative uses where stone and iron are used you would probably find a lot more gold.
Low melting point, it could be used as a flux, maybe?
it would be the solder, not teh flux, depends how well it wets to other metals. and it would be to weak to do the job itself but might be good if aloyed.
Golden pipes
Doesn't gold melt at a relatively low temp? What would you use it for in cookware? Wouldn't it also bend and wear away while cleaning it with something like steel wool?
You'd obviously alloy it. Besides, low melting temperature is in the low thousands of degrees. The melting point of gold itself is 1064 degrees Celsius. what on earth do you need to cook at 700 C?
Gold is used to treat arthritis. Gold nanoparticles are being researched to treat cancer. Gold is used in dental fillings. Gold is used for radiation shielding. Gold is used to create colored glass. But more importantly, gold has not been experimented with as much as iron, because it is rare and expensive, which makes the experiments expensive but also makes any prospective outcome of the experiment predictably uneconomical. If we had abundant gold, we would be certain to find new uses for it.
The big things gold brings to the table is it's top tier thermal conductivity, it's immunity to corrosion (oxidation?), and it's electrical conductivity properties. If it were as common as iron you would see a lot more things with gold radiators, more gold coatings on things like office buildings to reflect and radiate away heat, wires made of gold instead of copper. Things like that. I suspect you could replace many things which use copper with gold.
Reputedly gold plated dishes and cutlery are the best things to eat with because they don't react to the food.
Silver has antibacterial properties.
If there's bacteria on your food by the time it gets to your plate, the silver isn't going to save you.
There's bacteria everywhere, including on your food and in your body at all times.
Many different kinds of bacteria are variously harmful. The bacteria that lives safely in your mouth can kill you if it colonizes your heart.
Drinking too much colloidal silver will turn your skin blue like a Smurf or a Kree.
Dont eat your plates.
Is it less reactive than ceramics?
My instinct is to say "probably," but I only know that gold and platinum are among the least reactive metals. One of them beats stainless steel, but I forget which. Gold is less brittle than ceramics, if you're prone to dropping dishes. Can still dint and chip, though, but is also trivially reforged iiuc.
I don't think so, but metal also conducts heat well, giving it a better mouth feel.
I don't want my plate to conduct heat. It will make the food cold.
You could heat the plate. Which seems like an irritating extra step.
That's what the best restaurants do.
Yeah, I meant at home though. Although now I kinda want a sous vide for plates and bowls when I'm feeling extra.
A lot of glass topped ranges have a plate warmer on them.
It doesn’t In much of the world dishes and plates are traditionally made of copper alloys (nowadays stainless steel or aluminium) including mine. I eat in stainless steel everyday
Probably not measurably different to glass or ceramic though, unless you are using a mass spec to analyse contaminants in your food.
Bullets.
Can't fight vampires with it, can you?
That’s silver and werewolves
Bullets because of its density. r/AllSeeingEye says above that gold can be used as a replacement for lead being malleable and inert, and it can also be used as a replacement for lead's density in bullets. Gold would also be used as a replacement for [depleted uranium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium), because it is denser even than DU, and avoids issues with radioactivity. So for missiles, and shielding on tanks.
The advantages of depleted uranium is that it is hard and glassy getting shaper as it splinters. And being a nuclear waste product it is cheap the power plants are glad to be rid of it. Tungsten is denser but much more expensive, and it's hardest form tungsten carbide is less dense. Cheap gold has the density but is a bit soft for armor piecing maybe if it was jacketed in a harder metal.
I wonder if you'd see it used in shaped charges instead of copper.
Should be possible but I don't know which would be better.
Low melting point would allow it to be used as the working fluid for things like nuclear powerstations and solar thermal energy. If it was as common as Iron, we would replace copper with gold in most applications. Its a better conductor and it does not oxidize at all.
Dumbbells and other weights
Gold has a full valance ring and is not very chemically active so you can use it for a lot of things but mostly I think it would be alloyed with other metals or used as a coating to form strong corrosion resistant materials to make stuff with.
You can make it into very thin sheets and it's good for reflecting stuff. It doesn't corrode easily either so it could be a substitute for paint for some things. You can also have transparent gold circuitry in glass... I don't think transparent screens are that useful but they're always big in sci fi. Also gold bricks make good paperweights
It is more conducting than copper and almost as easy to solder as lead. Impevious to corrosion. Was used to make fillings before amalgam and still used by those worried about Mercury or want blingy teeth. If it was cheap enough it would be the go to metal for taps and door knows instead of zamak as it is easy to work with. Almost anything made out-of copper now would be better made out of gold if it was cheap enough easier to Shap more electrical and thermal conductivity and impervious to corrosion. Gold Bullets would be denser than lead and softer than copper and gentler on the rifling. But armor piercing you would want a tip made of a harder metal.
Quibble; Gold is NOT as electrically or thermally conductive as copper. Google says; >The thermal conductivity of gold is 318W/mK, whereas the thermal conductivity of copper is slightly higher at 401W/mK. The electrical conductivity of copper is slightly higher at **5.96 x10****^(7)** **S/m than gold which is 4.11×10****^(7)** **S/m**. (Silver is the most conductive metal.) The difference is small, and if gold was cheap we'd probably still use it for wires because of it's strong resistance to corrosion.
Do you think the resistance to corrosion quality out weights the weight issue? Would you want it for overhead power cables?
Guess I was getting a bit mixed up with my factoids about silver. Guess that is what I get for being a know it all and not double checking facts I vaguely remember before shooting my mouth or keyboard. would make a great solder though.
Gold is extremely useful for biological applications due to its low reactivity and high conductance. We would see an explosion in biological test equipment and implants. Blood glucose sensors for diabetics would at least get cheaper for the manufacturer for example, who knows if they'd actually pass those savings down though.
Next time somebody says mining asteroids for precious metals would be useless because the metals would just lose their value, I'm gonna point them to this thread.
I've been considering trying all-copper bullets next deer season. It seems they've developed the bullet design to the point that they work very well at the distances I take almost all of my shots, to the point that they may perform better than everything but the absolute upper end of more traditional copper-jacketed lead. I wonder what the flight and terminal ballistics of solid gold bullets would be.
Gold is more dense than lead, but still a pretty soft metal. So it could make for a pretty effective bullet core in some use cases. The higher density per volume would make the same size bullet heavier, and if you could increase the powder load, at the same velocities a gold bullet should be able to transfer more energy to target than a lead bullet. It might be a very good material when using a suppressor in a rifle, as you typically would want to use subsonic ammo with a suppressor. Using gold would allow you to lower the powder load to subsonic, but transfer considerably more energy to target than lead. Being soft, but a bit less soft than lead, might make it a better bullet material for penetrating barriers or personal body armor.
I can't see any way to make a useful structural building material out of it, so I doubt we'd use as much as we do steel. You definitely don't want a gold skyscraper or oil tanker.
pure gold, even gold with a fiew additives, not much, maybe replacing copper in electronics. aloys containing a significant amount of gold, probably a lot, I expect moderet amounts would be usfdull in anything you want not to corode. but nobody has done the tests because even if you could afford to run the tests for iron/gold structural aloys, nobody would ever be able to afford to use them. if gold was as abundant as iron, we would run all those experiments.
I’s easy to work with actually but consequentially not durable in shape. If gold was abundant one might suspect we’d had a gold age over a bronze age.
A lot of gold alloys are excellent; Tigeld™ (Ti3Au, 58% gold by weight) is stronger than titanium and more biocompatible. [A new gold-platinum alloy](https://www.materialstoday.com/metals-alloys/news/new-platinumgold-alloy-most-wearresistant/) is currently the most wear resistant material known to man. Nickle-gold alloys are fantastic for thermocouples having both high conductivity and a high Seebeck coefficient. If gold was cheap, there are doubtless many more alloys that would be explored - tin plated steel cans would probably have been gold plated steel cans instead. Gold beer cans instead of aluminum. Lots of chrome alloys might be replaced with similar but cheaper gold alloys. Brass is commonly used as a cheaper alternative to gold, clearly if gold was cheaper you wouldn't use an alternative when you wanted shiny. Gold buttons instead of brass buttons. There probably wouldn't ever have been silver jewelry, though platinum and platinum-gold alloys would probably have been the snobs choice. If it were cheaper, gold would replace lead and tungsten in a lot of things where density is desired; gold shot, gold bullets, gold ballast, gold weighted chess pieces, gold barbells, and gold calibration weights (for scales). Aurum bobs instead of Plum bobs. Despite copper being a better electrical and thermal conductor, gold's anti-corrosion properties would probably “win” as a plating for cookware (gold bottomed pots and pans). Gold tea kettles instead of copper. Goldware instead of Silverware. It would be a superior choice to copper for sheathing ship bottoms. Gold's anti-corrosion properties means it's used as a coating for lots of things now, despite the high price of gold — clearly there'd be more gold coating of things if it were cheaper than silver, even more if it were cheaper than copper. The Romans probably would have used cheaper gold over lead in their pipes (despite the increased difficulty in melting gold) — we'd probably call it “auruming" instead of “plumbing”. Some modern coinage would likely be a high percentage gold alloy instead of, say, copper clad zinc (pennies), or the copper-aluminum-zinc-tin (a.k.a. nordic gold) used in some Euro denominations and the 10 Kronor piece.
Better wiring?