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Gold/Mining/Energy : Micro-Fine Gold Plays - Franklin Lake, etc.
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To: Terry Christopher who wrote (346)2/2/1997 7:05:00 AM
From: Tim Hall   of 615
 
First of all, I never said that there was a cartel preventing new platinum mines from being developed.

These desert dirt deals are not new. They have been ongoing in New Mexico for at least 20 years. None have ever produced any Platinum. Several of the promoters have been prosecuted by the US attorney. When I was involved with examining them, they had several reasons for not being able to produce the platinum. One of the reasons they would give was that a world platinum cartel paid off assayers, consultants, lending institutions, etc in order to keep them out of the market. The other reason they would give was that no one but them was smart enough to assay the material or process it.

Now for your chemistry lesson.

My reference to noble metals goes back to high school chemistry and history which unfortunately was a lot longer than 6 years ago. Several metals were called noble because it used to be that only the nobility had them. Actually quite a bit of terminology came from that fact. Agua Regia (king's water) was the only solution which could disolve gold. One of the key ingredients in Agua Regia was chlorine, one of the noble gases.

The noble gases do not have all of their shells filled. They have one extra electron which is in one of the high energy shells. In the absence of other elements they form a molecule with another atom of the same gas. This is why you will always find the atoms of the noble gases in pairs but they are very unstable. The most common of the noble gases chlorine. Chlorine gas is very unstable. In the presence of any water it immediately forms hydrchloric acid. This is why chlorine gas is so deadly as are the rest of the noble gases. When these gases are inhaled they form a strong acid whch burns the lining in the lungs and can cause death immediately. When these gases form compunds with elemets from the other side of the periodic chart such as sodium, ( which is missing an electron in a high energy shell) they form very stable compunds such as common table salt.

The transition elements on the other hand, have all of their high energy shells filed. They are very stable and will only form compunds under certain condidtions. As stated previously, gold forms very few compunds and most of these are unstable.

Platinum does have a high melting point and does form some very useful alloys. However, alloys are not compounds. They are simply mixtures of different metals. The atoms of the different metals do not bond with each other. Rarely is native gold pure. It is usually alloyed with silver. This is where the carat rating for gold comes from. 24 carat gold is pure. 12 carat gold is 50% gold alloyed with other metals, usually silver.
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