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Olympic Gold Medals are not gold

Olympic Gold Medals Are Made Up Mostly of Silver

Next week in London, athletes from around the world will go for the gold. But as it turns out, the Olympic gold medal is mostly made of silver.

Weighing in at 412 grams -- or roughly the weight of a can of green beans -- the gold medal is made up of only 1.34%, or about 6 grams of gold.

The rest is comprised of 93% silver and 6% copper.

The 2012 Olympic medals were made from nearly nine tons of metal from Rio Tinto's Kennecott Utah Copper mine in Salt Lake City and its Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/olympic-gold-medals-made-mostly-111600613.html

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Comments

  • DorkGirlDorkGirl Posts: 9,994 ✭✭✭
    I didn't think they even had silver in them, so this is good news.
    Becky
  • PokermandudePokermandude Posts: 2,709 ✭✭✭
    Indeed. I knew the Gold medals in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics were silver with gold plating. I also got to hold one in my hands recently. My sister's friend was the goaltender for the Canadian women's hockey team image

    Looked it up and Wiki says: "The last series of Olympic medals to be made of solid gold were awarded at the 1912 Olympic games in Sweden. Olympic Gold medals are required to be made from at least 92.5% silver, and must be plated with a minimum of 6 grams of gold.[5] All Olympic medals must be at least 60mm in diameter and 3mm thick."
    http://stores.ebay.ca/Mattscoin - Canadian coins, World Coins, Silver, Gold, Coin lots, Modern Mint Products & Collections
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