Why Your Wedding Ring Isn't Actually Pure Gold

Your gold ring is a lie. Pure gold would be a terrible ring.

Gold is precious, so why not make jewelry from the real, solid thing? Why water it down with cheaper metals?

Here's the problem: pure gold is incredibly soft. So soft you can bend it by hand. A pure gold ring would scratch, warp, and lose its shape within weeks of daily wear. So jewelers mix gold with tougher metals like copper, silver, or zinc, creating an alloy. The atoms of those metals are different sizes, so they jam into the gold's crystal structure and stop it from sliding and deforming. That's what karat measures. Twenty-four karat is pure gold. Eighteen karat is seventy-five percent gold, the rest hardening metals. More copper turns it rose; more silver turns it pale.

So the most prized gold jewelry isn't the purest. The pure stuff is too weak to survive your hand. What you actually want is gold that's been deliberately contaminated.

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