Steel rusts over time. Copper turns green. But gold stays shiny, seemingly forever. Scientists have now discovered a property that explains why gold stays spotless.
Explainer: What is a metal?
Oxidation is a type of chemical reaction that can cause a metal to rust or tarnish when it meets oxygen. Atoms on gold’s surface, new data show, rearrange into a geometry that hinders that oxidation. If they didn’t, gold would begin to oxidize in seconds.
Santu Biswas and Matthew Montemore shared their new finding May 21 in Physical Review Letters. These researchers work at Tulane University in New Orleans, La.
In air, oxygen is bundled into molecules, each consisting of two oxygen atoms. For a metal to oxidize, it first has to split those oxygen ...
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