Medals at Tokyo olympics are recycled from discarded electronic tools
What are the Olympic medals product of? It seems an obvious resolution – gold, silver, and bronze; it’s on the trace! – however the silver medal is the finest one which is commonly fabricated from its pure aspect.
So what are the replacement medals product of – and what else would perhaps you potentially utilize them for?
Gold
Gold medals are no longer pure gold – that would perhaps well derive them too relaxed. As a replacement, they’re pure silver, with six grams of gold plating per medal.
Gold and silver are each and every very real parts, with neither reacting with air, however gold is even extra real than silver. If you occur to melted the medal down and soaked it in nitric acid, the silver would react to become silver nitrate however the gold would live real, that strategy you would separate the 2 metals out.
A gold medal weighs 556 grams. At a market trace of $80 per gram of gold, and $1 per gram of silver, you’re taking a evaluate at nearly $1000 of helpful metals per medal – $480 of gold, and $550 of silver.
Athletes had been known to sell their gold medals intact, racking up great better profits – some in the millions – so market trace would perhaps well no longer be the finest manner to derive cash off a gold medal.
Silver
Silver medals are the finest ones product of a pure aspect: they’re all Ag. Weighing in at 550 grams, their purity makes them extra chemically precious than the replacement medals – whilst you wished to utilize the silver for plating a teacup, or designing a bigger contact conceal, you’d titillating ought to warmth it to 962°C and melt it down, without any extra purification.
Bronze
Bronze is a extremely ragged and neatly-recognised metal, however it absolutely isn’t a pure aspect, and nor are the bronze medals technically ‘bronze’ – they’re brass.
Bronze will likely be an alloy of copper and tin, however bronze medals are an alloy of 95% copper and 5% zinc. That is continuously known as ‘crimson brass’, though industrial crimson brass, which is historic in valves and plumbing, will likely be much less pure than this, boasting about 85% copper and a mixture of tin, zinc, lead and other metals.
On the replacement hand, copper and zinc – while very relaxed metals themselves – alloy to derive a great extra tough metal. The bronze medal is the hardest and lightest medal (at 450 grams), so it’s potentially the finest to utilize as a discus, whilst you occur to desire a discus.
Recycled prizes
Whereas it’s a execrable opinion to reuse the metals after they’ve become medals, it’s been a convention over the last decade to include recycled materials in Olympic medals.
At Tokyo, 100% of the metals in the medals had been recycled. Between 2017 and 2019, of us across Japan donated ragged electronic devices, which had the helpful metals extracted from them.
In total, the manager serene several million tonnes of tools, and extracted 32 kilograms of gold, 3500 kilograms of silver and 2200 kilograms of copper and zinc for the bronze medals.
If you occur to’re attracted to finding out extra about recycling metals, we abet you to take hold of a evaluate at our Briefing on the Circular Financial system.
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