The Varied Uses of Gold
by Mark Nildern
http://www.rigold.com
Gold is a highly valuable precious metal, that most people
appreciate for its ornative qualities. There is scarcely
a woman today in the western world who doesn't have at
least one piece of gold jewelry, even if it is only her
wedding band? If we examine the history of this lovely
metal, we would see that wars have been fought over it,
people have died for it, people are consumed by greed
for it, others have betrayed friends and family for it.
This is because it represents wealth and power in the minds
of most people. Let us have a look, however, at some of
the more practical ways that gold is used every day.
The deployment systems for motor vehicle air bags, for
example, use gold-plated sensors that send a signal to the
air bag when it's time to deploy. Why gold? Simply
because this is the only metal that's resistant enough to
be used for this type of device. In addition, its
reliability factor makes it the best possible choice for
the metal that's used to save the lives of you and your
loved ones in the event of an accident.
Today's tremendous volume of communication requires an
equally large variety of phones. There exist today land
phones, cell phones, wireless phones, internet telephony,
etc. All of these carry the vast amount of daily business
and personal communication that takes place around the
world. But, without gold, we would not be able to use all
of these fabulous devices. Gold is a critical element in
the transmission of all phone calls. Each mouthpiece has
gold in its miniature transmitter, and, in addition, this
precious metal is used in phone jacks and connection cords.
The natural properties of gold make it the best element to
convey a superior telephonic signal, and so it is used in
virtually all of the phone systems in use today.
The onboard computers on the space probe Galileo are kept
from short-circuiting by the use of heavy ion conductors,
made from silicone and gold. It is completely dependent
upon its computers, and if they did not have this type of
protection, this and other space vessels would not be able
to function. We would lose critical information about the
universe and our place in it.
The President of the United States is certainly grateful
for gold, but not because of its market value or how
nicely it decorates his loved ones. Airforce One, the
plane that's reserved for the use of this country's
president, is equipped with gold-plated reflectors, which
are necessary in order to protect the plane from being
targeted by heat-seeking missiles.
For additional knowledge, or In order to protect ourselves
from possible space hazards, we are constantly peering into
the skies. We need to have strong, dependable telescopes
to do this, so that scientists can see at great distances
in significant detail. KeckTelescopes are used
for this purpose, and they contain gold-coated mirrors that
look around our space neighborhood. We have received
most detailed and precise images of Neptune and Uranus ever
recorded from these Keck Telescopes.
The many uses of gold are impressive, most of which far
outweigh that of embellishment or financial investment
considerations. With any luck, folks will learn to
appreciate this most precious metal for a far better reason
, what it can do to increase the quality of life for the
human race.
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