Special Metals Pages

Tuesday 31 July 2012

Olympic Medals Contain Less Gold


When we first heard that London would be holding the 2012 Olympic games, we looked into who and how the Olympic medals would be made, we wrote a post about how the medals would be made back in 2011.
Click here to read it
This year’s Olympic medals that were made by Royal Mint, were being guarded at the Tower of London until the Games began on July 27.
The 2012 gold medal is 92.5 percent silver and 1.34 percent gold, with the rest copper.
The silver medal is 92.5 percent silver, with the remainder copper, and the bronze medal is 97 percent copper, 2.5 percent zinc and 0.5 percent tin.
Although there is only 1.34% gold in the gold medal, it has been like this since 1912 when the last gold medals were handed out in Stockholm at the Olympic Games in Sweden, and its mainly because the price of gold has increased so greatly that to create 2000 medals out of gold would not be cost effective as well as causing possible problems with people trying to steal them.
The silver is 92.5% silver, which in recent months silver has been trying to overtake gold and although is is not worth as much as gold, could it cause problems?
We want to wish everyone competing in the 2012 Olympic games from all over the world, the best of luck and are supporting Team GB all the way.

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