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Precious Metals Research Paper

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Precious metals do not have their own group on the periodic table. They are arranged together on the table. These elements do have the same chemical properties, however they do not have their own classification. All of these metals do not rust, they are resistant to oxidation and corrosion and they only break down when they are in high temperatures. Gold (Au), silver (Ag), platinum (Pt), ruthenium (Ru), rhodium (Rh), palladium (Pd), iridium (Ir), and osmium (Os) all have similar properties and are considered to be precious metals.1
Many of these elements were found in platinum ores. Scientists used aqua regia, an acid that can dissolve metals like gold which single acids cannot do alone, to find the pure substance of the platinum ores. They ended up …show more content…

The only elements that were not found in this process was gold and silver. These two metals were known since ancient times. If they were to use aqua regia, then the pure substances of gold and silver would be extracted from the ore.
Platinum was discovered by Antonio de Ulloa in 1735. Ulloa established the first mineralogy lab in Spain and was the first to study platinum. Platinum was first recognized as an element in 1774 when Charles Wood isolated the ore with aqua regia. Then the pure form of platinum was found in the residue. However, there were more than one substance that was unknown in the residue. Hippolyte-Victor Collet-Descotils believed that there was an unidentified metals that caused the red color of some platinum salts. In 1803, William Hyde Wollaston investigated this by first dissolving the crude platinum ore in aqua regia. Then he was able to get to the platinum metal by dissolving the solution in ammonium chloride. The liquid which remained had properties which matched no known substance. Wollaston named it Rhodium. This was not the last element that Wollaston discovered that year. He used aqua regia to dissolve the platinum ore and isolated

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