Origin behind biting gold During the 1800s gold rush in California, the practice of biting gold to discover if it was real or fake began. Real gold is a soft material, so bite marks would appear on the gold and could easily be fixed. If the gold was fake, it would hurt your tooth to bite down on it.
While Olympic historians aren't sure which athlete started the trend, they believe the athletes nibble their prizes to test the metal. People once bit gold coins try to make an indent; a small tooth mark in a coin assured it consisted of real gold, which is more malleable than counterfeit gold-plated lead coins.
Biting Gold Coins: Testing in the Old Days
If a person bit a coin and verified that the bite mark was printed in the currency, this meant that the money was real (or soft enough to be gold).
Gold is a relatively soft metal, and consequently gold coins that are made of pure gold or a high percentage of gold, can be relatively soft and malleable. Therefore, biting the coin would leave a mark or an indent if it was real gold.
During the gold rush of the 1800s in California, the practice was quite popular of biting gold to determine whether it was real or fake. If the gold was fake, your tooth would hurt if you bit into it. Bite marks would be visible on the gold, as real gold is a soft material and could be repaired easily.
Biting metal is a tradition
During the California gold rush in the late 1800s, people would bite into gold to test if it was real. The theory was that pure gold is a soft, malleable metal. If a bite left indentation marks on the metal, it was most likely real. If it wasn't, you could break a tooth.
But how much is a gold medal worth? According to the International Olympic Committee, gold medals are required to be at least 92.5 percent silver, and are plated with about 6 grams of pure gold.
In contrast, gold atoms slide past each other relatively easily, which makes the metal soft and malleable. Gold is so soft, in fact, that one gram of it can be beaten into a sheet covering nearly a square metre. Such sheets are used in the process of 'gilding'.
If it's real gold, your teeth will form small dents in the metal. Fake gold won't dent at all on a bite test! Now, before you chip a tooth, remember that gold is a soft metal so there's no need to bite down very hard.
You cannot actually make a tooth mark in a gold coin - gold is a fairly soft metal, but it isn't that soft, and the coins usually contain enough alloy metal to make them durable. It is the lead that is soft enough to dent when bitten, and the fake coin which will have the tooth marks.
In fact, historically, gold was typically alloyed with other, harder metals to make it harder, while still maintaining the standard gold weight. Thus, the bite test was actually a means of detecting a lead forgery (teeth marks) versus a real minted gold alloy coin (no marks).
Cute aggression can also be considered a part of our “social biting” which we may have learnt from our ancestors. According to a research conducted psychological scientists of Yale University, the desire to pseudo-bite or squeeze anything we find excruciatingly cute is actually a neurochemical reaction.
So with the act of biting into their medals, they are actually supposed to check if they are in for a fair deal or not. Biting into a soft metal can actually reveal its purity. Hence, biting into a medal made purely of gold (a soft metal) will leave bite marks on its surface.
At auction, the value of an Olympic medal varies significantly based on the year it was made, the color of the medal, and the athlete who won the medal. Gold medals usually sell for between $20,000 and $50,000, with older Olympic medals selling for the most money.
Athletic excellence may very well be a sexually selected and very desirable trait that goes hand in hand with exceptional genetic quality. In other words, their physical prowess is intimately linked to good genes. Their fortunate chromosomal makeup that makes them great in sports actually make them great in appearance.
History says that, during the early days, traders bit their gold coins to check its authenticity when the precious metal was used as a form of currency. Gold is a soft metal which dents under slight stress and leaves a mark when gnawed.
Assuming a gold crown weighs one-tenth of an ounce, it can be worth as little as $40 if the alloy is 10 karat (40% gold) or more than $90 if the alloy is 22 karat (92% gold) based on a gold price of $1,000 per ounce. On average, a gold crown will be worth about $57 at this spot price.
On average, you can have your gold crown for at least 20 to 40 years. Gold caps or castings fit more accurately on your tooth than the other dental restorations. Porcelain crowns tend to shrink, thus the fitting of the crown may change, and decay around your tooth might develop.
How to Do the Float Test to Check If Gold is Real. Fill a cup or bowl with water and carefully drop your gold piece into it. If the gold is real, it will sink to the bottom of the cup. If it's fake, it will float to the top or hover in the middle of the cup.
Real gold does not turn green. What if your gold ring turned copper color? If it also leaves a green mark on your finger, it is likely that its base material is copper.
“Torches can sell for over US$300,000,” said Ingrid O'Neil, universally recognized among collectors as the one-woman dean of Olympic auctions, having held three per year, each year, since 1990.
From these specifications, we can see that the Olympic gold medals are only plated with more than 6 grams of gold on the surface. The base material is still silver. On the other hand, the silver medals are made of silver, and the bronze medals are made of bronze (a mixture of copper and another metal).
The five-coloured rings represent the five inhabited continents of the world. These are- Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania. The rings symbolise the union of the five continents, the participation of the athletes at these Games and express the activity of the Olympic movement.