Saturday Trivia: Name that Term ~We have a Winner~

[WoodenJefferson]

Name the term associated with the method of lightening coins, usually gold ones, by using a bag or a pouch.

 

Today's Prize: This handsom chart explaining the various roadside debris found on Georgia State Highways.

 

[MunkyMan95]

Is it tumbling?

[WoodenJefferson]

no

[physics-fan3.14]

who leaves proof sets and mint sets on the side of the road?

[WoodenJefferson]

who leaves proof sets and mint sets on the side of the road?

I see you've been reading the fine print.

 

Still no correct anwer...come on guys & gals.

[PerryHall]

It's called sweating.

[WoodenJefferson]

~ding ding ding~ We have a winner...way to go PerryHall

 

The lightening of gold or "sweating" is the practice in which coins are placed in a bag such as a leather pouch and shaken vigorously to knock off tiny flecks of metal. The bits of metal are gathered and sold as scrap, leaving the original coins to be returned to circulation at face value. A practice mainly employed with gold coins, leaving their surfaces peppered with tiny nicks.

 

Or, you could use aqua regia "Royal Water" to dissolve the gold, suspend it indefinetly and then reconstitutte it at a later date.

 

Au (s) + 3 NO3- (aq) + 6 H+ (aq) <-> Au3+ (aq) + 3 NO2 (g) + 3 H2O (l)

 

Dissolving a Nobel Medal

 

During World War II, Niels Bohr's Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen was something of a safe haven for Germany's Jewish scientists. Two of them, Max von Laue and James Franck, took their medals with them when they fled Germany and hid them at Bohr's laboratory. Bohr and George de Hevesy, a Hungarian chemist, conspired together to hide the medals after Denmark was invaded. They considered burying them (both to safeguard them from Nazi laws taking possession of gold and to protect the identities of the two scientists) but decided that burial wouldn't be certain enough to protect them.

 

Instead, as the invading troops entered the streets of Copenhagen, de Hevesy dissolved the two medals in aqua regia and left them on a shelf, dissolved, for the duration of the war. They even survived thorough searches of the laboratory by Nazi soldiers. Afterwards, de Hevesy recovered the gold from solution, and the Nobel Foundation recoined the two medals made from the same gold.

[zrlevin]

I didn't know that gold dissolved in nitric acid.