Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Chemists Strike Gold With Gold

Few people look beyond gold's glitter and rarity, but chemists have found that its chemical properties are just as interesting, making it a unique catalyst for producing unusual organic molecules. UC Berkeley's Dean Toste, a leader in the area of gold catalysis, attributes these properties to relativistic effects in the gold atom, the same effects that give gold its yellow luster. Essentially, gold catalysts are 'hot' because their electrons are heavy, this chemist proposes. Toste, a UC Berkeley associate professor of chemistry, has found a mother lode of new and unique gold-catalyzed reactions by applying Einstein's theory of relativity to the rare and precious metal. For the full article: Click Here .

Amazing, relativity applied to chemistry! Learn something everyday. Couldn't resist posting another part of it:

"In a gold atom, with 79 protons in the nucleus, the 79 electrons whip around the nucleus at about half the speed of light...The net effect is that gold's electrons are much heavier and are pulled in closer to the nucleus, lowering the energy levels and making the atom more compact. According to this hypothesis, gold's s shells, which are its lowest energy spherically symmetric electron shells, contract. This shields the electrons in outer, asymmetric p and d orbits from the nuclear charge, allowing them to expand slightly. In gold, the contraction of the outermost (6s) shell and the expansion of the next-inner (5p) shell reduces the energy difference between the two to the equivalent of a photon of blue light. This allows gold to absorb blue light and, thus, look yellow...Toste proposes that this same shielding effect allows the more tightly bound s shell to easily accept electrons from other molecules, while the partly shielded d shell can easily donate electrons to a reaction. Thus, gold is able to participate in reactions both as a donor and as an acceptor of electrons, which makes it particularly useful in catalyzing reactions at carbon-carbon bonds."

The wave-particle duality is mind-bending. In the above it bahaves as a particle in orbit at relativistic speed, yet at the same time it's a wave. There it is, whipping around at half of light speed; and yet knowing it momentum, it's impossible to say where it is.

Step back from "whipping around" ... it doesn't appear that an electron actually moves. Rather, as I've indicated before, it appears in different locations without traversing the space between. The "orbits" are a statistical plot not a reality.

I can't find any specific references I can link to but google for "quantized orbitals" and "Bohr" and you will likely find verbiage such as this:

"This means electrons inside the atom must be in discrete orbitals, which cannot be explained by classical physics."

Orbitals, though, does not mean orbiting like a moon.

Yes, DA, I'm with what you're saying. My problem is equating it with the idea of electrons increasing in weight as a result of relativistic velocity. I admit that I can't grasp the idea of that being achieved by anything other than an electron behaving as a discrete particle, 'whipping around'. Which is why I say that the wave-particle duality is 'mind-bending'.

As Richard Feynman said to his students, "Don't ask, 'How can it be?' "

As hard as it is to think about I find it easier to dismiss the phrase "wave-particle duality" and rather just accept that electrons are electrons and need not map to our classical pictures of what is a wave and what is a particle. They are what they are. We just don't have an understanding of what that something truly is.

DA
"We just don't have an understanding of what that something truly is."
Aye, to that and, from where I stand, you may as well be talking about the whole universe.

Quite.

Gentlemen, I have followed your page of shared ideas, with interest in the way you disect and reformulate, lending to each others credible input. I have a thought that in this process you may have conceived the seeds of an idea of how to use this new info, that could revolutionalize the extraction of gold from rock sources,thereby esculating the concepts into practical application in the coming future. Am I correct in my assumption?

Gentlemen, in observing your inputs, I quander the possibility that a new extraction method may be formulated. Am I correct in this assumption?

Dash22 wrote:
"Gentlemen, in observing your inputs, I quander the possibility that a new extraction method may be formulated. Am I correct in this assumption?"

In reviewing your words I ponder the possibility that you are trying to impress us by mangling the language. Please restate your question in common English. Thanks.

As expected from viewing your posts on other topics, you answered as I had expected and hoped not on such a simple question. You are impressive only to yourself, a jack of all and expert at none, due to a true lack of desire to apply yourself to any one thing enough to become somewhat close to an expert at anything, quite a mediocre man at best..but you are good, at the belittle method, as a comeout on all things in an effort to cloud the initiation of any dialogue with newcomers and weak bloggers.( such as your beatup/silly flogginging of that 16 year old, while showing how little research you had performed yourself and lack of qualitive knowledge both in historical & scientific venues of that particular tried and true subject)
I am not impressed as I visualize you as a squat little man with probably some sort of paper-chase pigskin, that makes you feel as large as we who actually make a difference in the world while actively using our brains and intuitions. Your hiding space is actually the shield of internet blogging...such a waste of a supposed place of intellectual interchange for useful applied purposes of the day.
I had hoped for a more productive interchange that would have bled onto and into your late 2006 subject/tirade of ignorance, in your effort to let the young 16 year old know how smart and learned you were..but alas this being my only and last jaunt on this ridiculous and wasteful blog site..I thought you might like a send off commensurate with what you in your mediocrity have tried to attain behind a viel of older guy smoke....

Then "quander" away.

Hmmm. Seems somebody is the lucky new recipient of a word-a-day calendar and is eager to use all those big shiny lexigraphical treasures found therein. Unfortunately, they got the April Fool's edition with nothing but silly made up words.

"Flogginging"

"Quander"

Those are priceless.

It's like a sixteen year old attempting to emulate Poe.

Please, Dash, amuse us some more. It's really fun to read your posts. I haven't laughed that hard in a while.

My only quander is what a flogginging is. Or what a quander is, for that matter.

Hee.

w

Thank you Wayne for confirming my thinking when I wrote: "I ponder the possibility that you are trying to impress us by mangling the language."

Dash22 ... thou doth protest too much.

Gentlemen, one can but quander the comic esculatation of spheroid utterances from the pillockquine Poe-seur. Let us await further flogginging with keen anticipatorynessness

Heh: "Pillockquine". That's brilliant. I have to admit, I had to consult a dictionary for "Pillock" - I knew I'd heard it before but couldn't remember what it meant. We should put together a petition to get pillockquine added to Webster's next dictionary as an adjectival form of pillock. Maybe Dash will send us a sketch of himself to include in the definition block.

I hope I can remember it long enough to throw it into a conversation some time.

(From the made-up word rate, I'd have to guess that "Dash22" is probably the online moniker of none other than George W. Bush himself. Hopefully he won't send a surge after us.)

How about let's all get back on topic? The general idea was that gold can act a a catalyst in all sorts of interesting reactions. Let's quit the juvenile word games and come back to the topic of interest.

Amaranth
Moderator

Well said, Wayne.

Sometimes, AR, it's necessary to address a person in a language they understand. I, for one, will not stand idly by and thus encourage these abusive intrusions, even if you mods do. This forum is awash with abuse. For goodness sake: DO YOUR JOB!

To a certain degree my job is to ensure freedom of speech.

Amaranth

Freedom of speech is applicable to the matters under discussion, where healthy argument is welcome. What is available for all to witness within this forum goes far beyond the legitimate bounds of that freedom.

Rose: I think your concern is misplaced. I asked the poster to use real words and did so nicely ("Please restate your question in common English. Thanks.").

The response I received was, to put it mildly, abusive ("You are impressive only to yourself").

I don't think Wayne and redewenur have done anything other affirm that the non-communication was non-constructive.

But I think we can all agree that we've pretty much pushed gold as a catalytic metal about as far as we can so lets close this thread and move on.