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Glossary of Mining Terms |
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Glossary of Mining Terms |
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Alloy(Latin: alligare - 'to bind up')
An alloy
is the mixture of two or more pure metals in order to create a metal with
new qualities,
Gold is mainly a mixture of a number of different metals such as copper, silver, zinc etc to create different colours and to make gold more 'golden' coloured.
As gold is a soft metal, the mixture will make the metal harder so that it is more resilient to wear and hard enough to hold a precious stones in rings.
Gold has different grades of purity called carat, ranging from 8, 9, 14, 18, 22, to 24. 24 carat gold is the purest. |
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About Precious Metals.com 2005 |