why can't we prepare gold from nuclear reactions?

Question

because when we add protons to lead the atomic no. changes to
gold's atomic no.

Answer 1

You *can* make gold from other elements through nuclear reations. But it costs more to do so than the value of the gold you form, so what's the point?

Would you spend $1,000,000 to make a lump of gold worth 100 dollars? Talk about a losing proposition!

Answer 2

We can! And it has been done using particle accelerators/colliders, but...

-It's difficult; gold is only one of many possible elements you can end up with, and it's terribly difficult to control the process so as to get the end results you want.

-It's expensive - the energy costs of running a particle accelerator/collider are frighteningly high.

-It produces a very, very small amount of gold - a few atoms at a time - in about 10 cubic centimetres of gold (enough, say, to make a substantial bangle/torq bracelet), there are approximately 6 x 10^23 atoms of gold.
So if you were lucky enough to be able to make 100 atoms per second (which is probably pushing it way past today's technology level), it would still take 190,258,751,000,000 years before you could start making your bracelet.

So it's vastly easier just to dig the stuff out of the ground.

Answer 3

Actually, the atomic numer of lead is higher than that of gold, so we'd have to remove protons to transform lead into gold.

Even they could bombard some other atoms with protons, and transform them into gold, why bother? It would be far cheaper to mine the gold.

Answer 4

you are only adding protons you also need to add neutrons, and electrons. Neutrons are the hard . Also as said before lead would not be the right atom to use if you wanted to add protons to make gold.

Answer 5

this brings back a funny story about alchemy. It is impossible to turn one atom into another, even the extremes of space can only fuse the lightest two elements known to man hydrogen and helium, from hydrogen into helium. so i doubt that it is impossible to reach or even surpass the gravitational and reactive power of the sun to create some of the medium-weight elements out of others. but then again, if it was possible, that will make 100 percent pure gold...

"mom grab the particle accelerator" :P

Answer 6

We can't get the temp and pressure to make Gold. All elements from Iron are make in stars

Answer 7

gold isn't radio active

Answer 8

you can but it has two drawbacks, I believe, firstly it's probably more expensive than mining natural AU and secondly it's radioactive...