Surely the precious metals would find new uses if they decreased in
price by a factor of 100 or so. Silver conducts electricity a little
better than copper, and if it's in the elemental state, would be far
less expensive and environmentally damaging to extract. In
manufacturing, many electrode materials need to be as chemically inert
as is practical, and both gold and platinum excel there. Chemical
apparatus exposed to high temperatures, such as crucibles, used to be
made of platinum for some very special analysis; we'd see that again.
Gold- or platinum-plated *everything*, both for looks and for corrosion
resistance. Maybe we'd see a bunch of cars sporting gold-plated
bumpers. ;-)
Oh, and Fort Knox would be open to the public. Tours and such, for a
fee. "Get your souvenir kilogram gold ingots here! Own a piece of
history! Just $29.95, or two for $50!" :-)
Best -- Terry
On 8/15/2020 6:09 PM, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Sat, 15 Aug 2020, Michael Clive wrote:
I can't see how dropping 10 million Kg of gold on the market wouldn't just collapse the price. It might be helpful for genuine rare stuff like vanadium or scandium, but not sure how much Pt/Pd/Au/Ag we need.
Gold is valued more as a status symbol and a currency substitute than anything else -- its price would drop radically if the market got flooded by cheap new sources. But things like tungsten and the platinum-group metals, while they do show up in things like jewelry, are valued mostly for their technical uses. Their prices would drop some because there'd be less of a bidding war over them, but not that much.
Like, how would the world change for the better if Pt was as cheap as aluminum?
Platinum would be a great catalyst for peroxide rocketry if it wasn't so bloody expensive. :-)
Henry
