Gold
chemical element with symbol Au and atomic number 79; a dense, malleable, and corrosion-resistant precious metal widely used as currency, in jewelry, electronics, and as a financial reserve asset
Gold is a chemical element; its chemical symbol is Au (from Latin aurum) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a bright-metallic-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal, a group 11 element, and one of the noble metals. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements, being the second lowest in the reactivity series, with only platinum ranked as less reactive. Gold is solid under standard conditions.
Gold often occurs as the free element (native state), as nuggets or grains, in rocks, veins, and alluvial deposits. It occurs in a solid solution series with the native element silver (as in electrum), naturally alloyed with other metals such as copper, platinum, and palladium, as well as mineral inclusions such as within pyrite. Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, often with tellurium (gold tellurides).
Gold is resistant to most acids, though it does dissolve in aqua regia (a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid), forming a soluble tetrachloroaurate anion. Gold is insoluble in nitric acid alone, which dissolves silver and base metals, a property long used to refine gold and confirm the presence of gold in metallic substances, giving rise to the term "acid test".
“Gold” enters the record as chemical element with symbol Au and atomic number 79; a dense, malleable, and corrosion-resistant precious metal widely used as currency, in jewelry, electronics, and as a financial reserve asset. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Gold, chemical and element can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q897. The Library of Congress control number is sh85055692. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gold” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.