what is gold used for besides jewelry?

Answer 1

The Apollo spacecraft to the Moon had silver wires with gold solder joints. Gold Chloride has been used as an effective medicine to treat Rhuematoid Arthritis. The largest gold nugget ever discovered was found by a farmer and he used it as a door stop for several years until someone told him how valuable it was. I have even heard of gold foil being used to wrap suchi in the finest Japanese restaurants, although I don't think it digests very well. The atomic nucleus of all matter was first discovered by shooting alpha particles through gold foil. So I think you could say that it has lots of uses.

Answer 2

The foremost use of gold is for monetary purposes, most of it being kept as bullion in reserve for notes issued. The second most important use of gold is in jewelry, and third in a variety of industrial applications mentioned by other answerer.

I searched in google and this is a good page.

http://www.digistar.mb.ca/minsci/uses/gold.htm

There are other sites that said that jewelry is number one, which is incorrect, is just number two. Most of the gold's fate is to be stored in banks.

New uses are still being developed with nanotechnology...

I didn't find numbers but I remember from a class (years ago) that about 70% is used for banks, maybe 25% in jewelry, and 5% is all the other applications. The numbers may not be accurate, but the general picture is correct.

Answer 3

Among other things, it is used a great deal in the electronics industry, notably in nanotechnology. The dental industry uses it as do other biotechnologies. In addition, it has interesting optical properties. Some modern jet aircraft windows are coated with gold. The Hubble telescope has been protected by gold coatings to provide corrosion resistance and electrical connections. It's also used in some recordable compact disks.

Answer 4

in spacecraft to insulate and protect objects

it is necessary to protect the equipment which should work in space against the most IR radiation. Exactly that’s why some parts of the spacecraft are wrapped in a metal heat-insulating “foil”. Typically, these “reflectors” are made of aluminum, silver, copper or gold. However, gold is widely used in the aerospace industry.

Often the film is made of so called kapton, which in turn is comprised of a thin layer of gold, aluminum and silver. The last two can give a golden color with a very thin sputtering. Usually usage of several layers dramatically improves the strength of the coating. You can find more information about the coatings here.

A good example of gold plating technology application is modern spacesuit: filters in helmets are made of polycarbonate plastic (protection from UV radiation), also covered with a thick layer of gold which is enough to protect the astronaut from solar radiation.

Answer 5

I like the answer by Sciencenut above, and would like to add a couple more, like art, gold leaf, stemware, pottery, fingernails and another food- cake icing decoration 24k pressed so thin into sheets and placed on a cake.- pretty cool huh.

Answer 6

Dental work, circuit boards, electronics, coins, gold bars

Answer 7

dental work, electronic circuits, electron microscopy. If you looked a bit I think you would find many many more uses. Try using Google...

Answer 8

Some sweet teeth!

Answer 9

gold is the best electricity conductor

Answer 10

Teeth, electrical equiptment, ceilings, books, furniture. You name it