what is gold?

Answer 1

GOLD IS A COMMODITY

Answer 2

In the context of investments, gold is the investment of last resort. It used to be the basis or floor value of money (still is in some places, Denmark and Austria I think still use it in some capacity along those lines). While the US officially no longer does, it still maintains some enormous stocks of the precious metal for monetary reasons.

You can trade gold on the New York Mercantile Exchange and there is a market in London that makes period "sets" for the prices there. You can speculate on gold with the purchase of coins (that may or may not have seperate numismatic value) and bars (bullion). There is even an ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) by Ishares to let you buy gold as if you were buying stocks.

When things are bad or risky, gold tends to go up and tends to go down when it is ignored because business is good and folks have better places to put their money to work.

Answer 3

A soft metal with a characteristic colour and, since it is chemically unreactive, one of the few elements to occur in the natural state. It will dissolve in aqua regia('royal water'),a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids. It can be beaten into very thin sheets('gold leaf') to be used as architectural ornament .Another use is in jewellery , and some is also employed in the electronics industry and to colour glass or make it heat-reflecting . About 1500 tons of gold are mined each year , chiefly in South Africa and the USSR, and the most of this is stored as bullion . There is a lot of gold in the sea, but with only 1 gram in 100,000 tons of sea water, schemes to reclaim gold from the oceans have always failed.

Answer 4

Gold is an element listed in the Periodic Table of Elements. It's number is 79, symbol Au. It's a stable metal, very soft in it's pure state, considered to be precious by most everyone, now and in the past.
The U.S. has reserves of pure gold in places such as Fort Knox and other heavily guarded facilities. This used to be what our currency was based on, in other words, that was the collateral that made our money worth what we said it was. Due to inflation, however, I truly don't think that our currency is totally backed by these reserves anymore. There is way more money in circulation than gold to back it up.
They used to make currency coins out of gold, but because it is so soft, many people would scrape shavings off each coin they got and eventually they would have collections of gold dust, which they could then sell for money themselves, while devaluating the actual coins. Due to this and just normal wear on the coins, they would become unusable very quickly. That's when they started using zinc, nickel, copper, etc. first as additives to harden them and then to replace them altogether. Pure gold coins are collector's items now and are not used at all in currency trading.
In jewelry, the carrot stamp (10K, 14K, 18K, 22K, 24K) indicates the percentage of real gold with 24 being pure, and 10 being the least pure. Additives are put in gold jewelry because just like with the coins, pure gold jewelry will wear out with continued usage. Most 24K jewelry is for show only as it bends very easily and breaks.

Answer 5

Gold is a chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol Au (L. aurum) and atomic number 79. A soft, shiny, yellow, heavy, malleable, ductile (trivalent and univalent) transition metal, gold does not react with most chemicals but is attacked by chlorine, fluorine and aqua regia. The metal occurs as nuggets or grains in rocks and in alluvial deposits and is one of the coinage metals.

Answer 6

A heavy, soft expensive element - metal.
Good conductor, not as good as silver

It is resistant to most acids (aqua regia being a notable exception which is a micture of nitric and hydrochloric acid)

Does not tarnish, very unreactive and safe for use inside the human body. Very rare, hence price

More info if you are specific about what you want to know

Answer 7

Time is GOLD

Answer 8

It is obsession for women
It is investment for men
It is a metal for metallurgist
It is medicine for a doctor (for arthritis treatment)
It is a hedging instrument against inflation for marketment
It is a standard of quality (for some)
It is something which reached dizzying heights in recent past in terms of price.

Answer 9

gold is a metal, we can also said this as a type of bullion...

Answer 10

A metal.