Please answer as quickly as possible as i need this for school. THX!!!!!
Purified gold is stored in bars called ingots. Sizes range from less than an ounce to 400 ounces. Gold is found in relatively pure form in nuggets, grains, or dust. It is also found in nature alloyed with mercury, silver, platinum, or copper. Grandpa
Gold is found in several different geological settings. There are three principle geological environments :- 1) Archaean cratons; these are the basement rocks occuring on various continents where gold is both mined and explored for in Ontario, Quebec, Western Australia, Brazil and West Africa. 2) Active tectonic margins above subducting oceanic plates, or where such activity has formerly been taking place. It is this type of environment that is responsible for the gold deposits of the South American Cordilliera, British Columbia, the Philippines and Indonesia. 3) Aluvial and Palaeo-placer gold deposits; these are sedimentary in origin. Those palaeo-placer deposits of the Witwatersrand basin in South Africa being the largest in the world. Modern alluvial placers are found in the Klondyke in the Yukon, Canada and in various other parts of the world. Pure gold is seldom found in geological settings. Alluvial gold recovered from river gravels is often 92% pure, the remainder being composed largely of silver. The metal recovered from the mining is refined into bullion bars by companies such as Johnson Matthey at 99.99% purity. Gold from other sources is extracted from rock, which is first crushed and pulverised, using cyanide. Following further chemical processes, the gold is then recovered which is then refined as described above.
