TSES 2305 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Chemical Affinity, Tses, Blast Furnace
11 Jun 2016
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Gold is always chemically pure; always occurs as nuggets silver can occur as pure metal nuggets or as ore: ore casserite is extremely easy to refine. You can heat it up in a pan and it would give off the oxygen that is bound to the silver as a result you get pure silver; oxygen is not very well held onto it. Oxygen comes off at less than 200 degrees celsius. Not especially hard; wouldn"t use it to make tools or weapons. Never occurs as a pure metal; only as compounds. Easily refined by heat at less than 100 degrees celsius. They did not have practical uses for it in antiquity: they did not know it could be used to make thermometers. Silver and lead occur in the same kind of rock. Lead slowly corrodes: oldest surviving artifacts date back to 6500 bc. Lead is not very malleable; not something you can hammer easily.
