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THE GOLD RUSH

   

      Why we have weakness, madness, possessiveness and soft corner for this yellow metal?

SOME ANSWERS
 1. It is glittering always.  It does not rust like iron.
2. It is not abundant like water or silver.  Also it is not scarce like diamond or uranium.
3. By adding little copper, you can shape it in any way you want.  One can make intricate jewelry with it.
4. It is portable wealth or property.
5. Its price usually does not nose dive.  It is stable or grows.  It is even take care of money inflation.
6. It is instantly en-cash-able.
7.  On the long run, it does not depreciate and only appreciate.
8. Gold attracts women.  May be due to female hormones.
9. Dowry in the shape of gold ornaments is the main stay in many societies.
10. People believe 'investing a portion of their income in gold' is good strategy.
11. It can be pledged, sold, en-cashed.  In emergency, nothing helps like gold.
12. Banks are ever ready to offer loans against gold.  Gold pledging is the main-stay of many private finance institutions.

    Hence no wonder, people go for gold.  Platinum is costlier than gold and it is called 'white gold'.  But it was not able to achieve the status of gold.  Gold in electronic form was a success.  You can purchase digital gold at any time, any quantity (even in milligrams).  You can convert it into physical gold or cash at any time.

SOME SCIENCE
     Gold is the good conductor of electricity.  Since it is costly, we cannot make wires and cables using it.  Gold in micro grams is used in all the smartphones for electrical contacts.  Constituents in the atoms of mercury and gold are the same, but for one excess proton and electron in the mercury atom.  Mercury is cheaper than gold.  But we are not able to turn mercury into gold easily.

SOME HISTORY
     There was a subject called 'Alchemy'.  Its practitioners were called 'alchemists'.  They practiced many things.  They mainly tried to turn lead into gold using chemical methods.  We got many discoveries in chemistry out of this experiments.  But they failed to turn lead into gold even though they tried it for hundreds of years.  Today we know, only nuclear reaction will turn one element into another and not chemical reaction which involves only electrons in the outer layer of atoms.
     A 'gold rush' is a new discovery of gold-that brings an on-rush of miners seeking their fortunes.
     California gold rush  was the largest mass migration in history.  Around the year 1890,  300000 people arrived in California. World has seen many such gold rushes.
     Gold continues to attract people even though it is not a life giving substance like milk or water.
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