(Updated with some new "nuggets")

This is part of my blog series about the awesomeness of shiny things. Enjoy!

Gold is, perhaps, the most awesome substance on Earth. I don't just say this because its shiny. That just enhances the fact. Let me share some of gold's virtues to make you a believer:

Softness
Gold is around a 2.5 on the Mohs Hardness Scale, which makes it soft enough that a fingernail can scratch it, or teeth can easily leave marks on it (which use to allow miners to test for it). This softness has lead to many great uses through history, when technology was at a minimum.

Malleability
Gold is such an easy metal to form that a single Troy ounce (31.1g) can be cold-hammered into a transparent sheet that's 10000sqft (92.9sqm). No other metal can do this. Astronaut's visors are coated in ultra thin sheets of gold to reflect harmful radiation. On the inside of the suits, everything outside appears blue-green, since gold reflects the reds and oranges.

Ductility
Gold is the most ductile metal, meaning it can be easily drawn into wires without breaking. A single Troy ounce of gold can produce a wire almost 1mi (1.6km) long.

Inertness
Gold is such a chemically stable metal that is can be found in grains and nuggets in nature that require little or no refining. In ancient times, this allowed creations of coinage and jewelry without advanced refining techniques.

Corrosion Resistance
Gold was the first metal known that could resist being dissolved by any acids or weather elements. This means it won't turn green, like copper, or red, like iron. Only a 3:1 mixture of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid (Aqua Regia) can dissolve gold. (On the alkaline side, some cyanide compounds can dissolve it. Mercury can also alloy with it at room temperature.) This resistance to corrosion is why electronics are plated with gold. Copper and silver are better electrical conductors, but they will corrode and tarnish, respectively.

Tastelessness
Imagine a metal with no taste. If you've ever had a lozenge, you know how zinc tastes. If you've had a nose bleed, you probably know how iron tastes. Calcium has a taste, as does silver. These tastes come from chemicals in the body dissolving microscopic particles of the metals into ions that can be sensed by the taste buds. No chemical in the human body can dissolve gold, so it has no taste and can pass right on through the digestive system with nothing lost. Gold in, gold out!

Density
Gold is one of the densest elements in existence (19.31 times that of water), which is one of the reasons it is so rare on Earth's surface. (Most of the densest metals sunk to the Earth's core as the planet cooled during its formation.) This makes gold difficult to fake. The only denser elements are some of the platinum group ones (platinum, iridium, osmium) and radioactive ones (depleted uranium, plutonium). These all have precious metals prices, as well, so they are not easy to obtain. Tungsten is the only non-precious metal close to the density of gold, and it takes such high temperatures to work that only an elaborate mint can produce fakes. Just to get an idea of how dense gold is, picture a soft drink can. That's 12oz (341g). If that was filled with gold, instead of high fructose corn syrup, it would weigh 14.2Lbs (6.6kg).

Rarity
Just how rare is gold? If you own any, this will make you feel special: All the gold mined in human existence (of which most still exists today) is estimated to be such a small amount that it would only fill a cube that's 60ft (20.4m) on each side.

Color
Most other metals have a grey shade. Some may have a slight blue hue, but aside from copper, gold is the only colored metal in its pure form. What's interesting about the color is that it's not a chemical property, but its a relativistic property. To explain in plain English, imagine the planets orbiting Sol (the Sun). Mercury has to go faster than Pluto to not fall into Sol an burn up. That is why Pluto's years are 1028 times longer than those of Mercury. In the same manner, the electrons closer to the nucleus of gold must travel faster than those toward the outside. Since gold is 79 on the periodic table, it has a rather large nucleus that really tugs those electrons toward it. This tug is so strong that the electrons orbit at a large enough fraction of the speed of light that their reflection properties of light are shifted into the visible spectrum. Einstein must have loved gold!

Electrical Conductivity
The only metals better at conducting electricity than gold are copper and silver, but, as mentioned above, they can corrode and tarnish. This allows for unshielded gold wiring in electronics or for gold plated connectors.

Diamagnetism
Iron, nickel, and neodymium, are all ferromagnetic metals, meaning they can make permanent magnets to attract many metals. Gold REPELS magnets.

Anti-Inflammatory
Some gold salts have been shown to reduce inflammation from arthritis and tuberculosis, when injected into the affect area.

I hope you enjoyed this discussion on how awesome gold is. Feel free to show your appreciation for this article by mailing me any spare gold you may have lying around.