okay, meffy was right about the gold thing

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okay, meffy was right about the gold thing 2007-08-04T07:26:31+00:00 it's true that gold doesn't conduct as well as silver, and surprisingly it actually has to do with the fact that gold doens't tarnish or create oxides when electrified. This increases the resistance... so it appears that gold-plated silver would the way to fly in the arena of esoteric audio reinforcement (and anything else electronic for that matter) i was completely wrong on this one... here's a copy of the e-mail, Josh, If you go to Wikipedia and look up gold, silver and copper you can find the numbers they have for Electrical Resistivity: (the lower the number the better the conductivity) Gold = (20°C) 22.14 nÙ·m Silver = (20°C) 15.87 nÙ·m Copper = (20°C) 16.78 nÙ·m According to that, silver is the best, so I guess I was wrong... But there it is... Maybe your friends looked it up and found the same thing. However, I am pasting in a response from a professor about this topic and he supports the fact that GOLD is the best metal to use, even if it is not the best conductor. See the red, underlined part that is the key... Copper good, Siver is better but in fact GOLD is not as good a conductor but because it is less reactive (which means it doesn't corrode or tarnish, which can makes the contact area very resistive) it therefore makes it the best to use in electrical circuits because it is more reliable. This is especially true for connectors, were the electrical resistance is often the highest due to contamination or tranish on the metal!!!! So I was wrong but also right. Date: Mon Mar 8 07:41:21 1999 Posted By: Dan Berger, Faculty Chemistry/Science, Bluffton College Area of science: Chemistry ID: 919564126.Ch --------------------------------- Message: Why is gold less reactive and lower conductivity than copper or silver? For its place in the periodic table we expect gold to be more reactive and have a lower electronegativity than silver or copper. --------------------------------- I am afraid that you are incorrect about the periodic trends in the vicinity of gold. If you examine the columns adjacent to the coinage metals, you find that zinc is more reactive than cadmium, which is more reactive than mercury; and nickel is more reactive than palladium, which is about as reactive as platinum. You find the same trend in electrical conductivities: the more reactive metals are generally also better electrical conductors -- and this makes sense! Better electrical conduction implies more loosely-held valence electrons; more loosely-held electrons allows for better metallic conduction. (This trend is not always followed: silver is a slightly better electrical conductor than copper, but is somewhat less chemically reactive.) Electrical conductivities (listed in the original as resistivities) taken from the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 61st Edition. Incidentally, gold is often used for electrical contacts not because it is the best electrical conductor but because it is perhaps the least chemically reactive of metals. Metal oxides and sulfides (the tarnish on copper and silver) are insulators and disrupt electrical connections. Whether the more reactive members of each column are near the top or the bottom depends on which end of the table you are at; fluorine is far more reactive than iodine, but rubidium is much more reactive than lithium. As the transition metals are in the middle you would expect the vertical reactivity trends to blur and shift; and in fact, while copper is more reactive than gold, I believe that hafnium is more reactive than titanium. For more on the properties of gold (and other heavy elements) see one of my other answers. Dan Berger Bluffton College http://cs.bluffton.edu/~berger joshhunsaker https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=154168

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Post by nuffink » Sun Aug 05, 2007 1:21 am

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