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People highly value gold, an ordinary element. This is very interesting. But gold is not a chemically interesting substance. But of the 118 different chemical elements, people most often used gold as currency. So why? Why didn't people choose magnesium or thorium? People used different metals as money in the past. For example, coins made of aluminum were used in East Africa and Uganda in 1907. In 1931, 10-cent coins were produced from antimony in Guizhou, China. In 1943, Poland minted coins using magnesium. But these were temporary trials. Coins in use today are produced from copper, gold, iron, lead, silver, and zinc. For an element to be used as money, it must be both easy and difficult to find in nature. Otherwise, everyone collects money on the street. Thus, money becomes worthless because it is so easy to find. But finding the element shouldn't be too hard. Otherwise, it will not be possible to find enough raw materials to print money. Now let's take a closer look at the periodic table for coin selection. Since the elements on the right side of the table are gaseous they are not practical. Nobody wants to carry helium in a bottle in their pocket. Moreover, most of these gases are colorless. What gas is in the bottle? Let's keep looking. There are two liquid elements here: Mercury and bromine. These two elements are highly toxic. So let's eliminate both elements. The alkali metals and alkaline earth metals in the left column are very reactive. For example, an explosion occurs when water falls on sodium and potassium. Let's remove these elements now. Radioactive elements can cause cancer. Therefore, let's eliminate the elements thorium, uranium, plutonium, rutherfordium, seaborgium, moskovium, einsteinium. To make a coin, that element must first be melted down. On the left are hard and durable elements such as titanium and zirconium. Melting these materials is very costly. Therefore, we need to eliminate them as well. As a result, few elements remained. There are many elements left that we know the name of. Iron, aluminum, copper, and silver. In addition, metals that are both abundant in nature and solid at room temperature are: Ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, tellurium, rhenium, osmium, iridium, platinum, and gold. They're in the yellow zone. These are called "noble metals". Noble metals are very difficult to react with other elements. This adjective is an important criterion for them to be their currency. Except for silver and gold, these elements have some problems. They are very rare in nature. Also, it is very difficult to melt these metals. For example, the melting point of platinum is 1768 degrees Celsius! Now only 2 elements remain: Gold and silver. Both are not very common in nature. But they are not difficult to find. Both have low melting points. Thus, they can easily be turned into coins, ingots and jewelry. But silver has a problem. Silver turns black when it comes into contact with sulfur in the air. Gold is more advantageous in this case. It is very difficult for gold to react with other substances. Except for copper and gold, other metals are gray in color. Gray color is not attractive. Gold and Copper are yellow and bright. But copper turns green when it comes into contact with moisture in the air. Whereas gold is always bright yellow. That's why people like gold with an attractive color. The main reason why gold is so valuable is that it is chemically uninteresting. Thanks to this stagnant state of gold, a statue made of gold can be exhibited in museums without any deformation even after 500 years.