Heavy metal: gold and silver
Introduction
From the fourteenth century, the extraction of precious metals such as gold and silver, had a great boom in Latin America, where the Spaniards were responsible for extracting this valuable metal, where there was exploitation and abuses by parts of the Spaniards towards theindigenous, where they were paid with a pepena, which means that after working they could extract metals and use them to live, since at that time the essential items were frequently expensive. It is also worth mentioning that workers were exposed to subhuman conditions, without any protection, long days, exposed to breathing minerals where they intoxicated, landslides and floods of the day -to -day.
Developing
Silver and gold represented riches in Spain where it endorsEurope. In addition, the silver represented a quarter of all imports in the 16th century in the Spanish crown.
But its production was variable, since it began to fall in the years of 1571-1580 with 66 million pesos and that amount was increasing in the late 1600s, where there was a decline in production, due to economic influencesand policies that could contribute to these facts. But due to their great attraction, precious metals were used as a symbol of beauty and also as ornaments that mediate the value of money, but over the years precious metals became a symbol of wealth and power. One of the most important characteristics of any jewel is its durability and purity, so they use the best known materials.
Precious metals are those that are in free state in nature, that is, they do not combine with other elements to form compounds. For example, gold can be found in forms of pepas in the alluvial deposits given by the disintegration of the rocks. In jewelry, the most used are silver, ag, gold, au, and he skated, PT, this being the last the most expensive of the three, but the rhodium (RH) for its rarity, becomes the most expensiveOf all these. In addition, by metals, precious is understood as the proportion that the pure precious metal that is in alloy is in weight.
"Gold is a soft, bright, yellow, heavy, malleable and ductile transition metal, is normally in its purest state, in the form of pepites and alluvial deposits". In other words, it is a yellowish metal, which is soft (therefore, it is used alloy with copper or silver), it is very ductile and malleable, because it can be reduced by sheets of up to a ten -monthly millimeter of a millimeter of known thicklike gold bread. Where this is in nature at a very low proportion, 0.0000005% by weight.
It is invariable in front of atmospheric agents and is only attachable to few chemical agents, such as chlorine, bromineSodium cyanide in oxygen. The most important deposits are found in the South African Republic, in Russia, EE. UU., California, Arizona and Colorado, Australia and Zimbabwe. The oldest separation procedure is, is the subsequent amalgamation washing.
conclusion
At present, cyanuration is the most extensively used method in the world to leaching precious minerals. The exhaustion of easily leaching minerals and the increase in silver prices have forced the mining industry to process complex minerals that can be refractory to cyanide. A mineral is considered refractory when less than 80% is extracted during cyanide leaching.
That is, it is the treatment of the mass that contains gold with a diluted solution of sodium cyanide;After a few days a complex ion is formed where gold rushes with zinc that then refines electrolyically. Among the best known alloys are minting gold, 18 carat gold, white gold and blue gold. In addition to being alloy, gold is used in the form of chloride.
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