A story on fake gold

[alvin]

So, the police and business owners came back to the Checking Service. This time, the inspector totally cut the jewelry into thin slices and checked them under high-X microscopes. They found some white micro crystal structures the cuts. Then, they used complex chemical method to identify what's that -- the white contents turned out being a type of metal called "ruthenium". This type of metal's melting temperature is much higher than gold, regular torch could not tarnish it. Spectrum analyzer that they used earlier could only check surface, but could not find this type mixture. The gold contents of the jewelry is about 50% (fake maker has to use some gold, so the color is yellow), and ruthenium's price is much lower than gold.

So, that's the story of fake gold. Even a group of professionals were cheated. Water is deep.

[sheepherder]

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[alvin]

Originally Posted by sheepherder

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Don't worry. It happened in Nanking, not upper state of New York But I am not sure how coin collectors checking their items. In imagination, coin is harder to fake than jewelry -- jewelry does not have a fixed pattern, so you cannot tell its fake or not by its appearance. If it's yellow, heavy, soft, and not tarnishing under fire... what else it can be? Obviously, there are lots of tricks in that business.

[Edit] BTW, here is ruthenium. It's also the first time I heard of this kind of metal so I looked it up in wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutheni...a_half_bar.jpg