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Making Purple Gold

🕑 Added 2023-12-20 06:20:07 +0000 UTC

Comments

Rocinante

I'm a jeweler, and I've wanted to mess with purple gold for years.

Shayan Peyghambari

That was a great video!

J-D-a-r-t-e-r-

This video was sooooo cool my colleagues loved watching it with me

Joe

Machinist here. Concerning the pitting on the outer surface of the gold, I wonder what it would look like if you carved a thin layer off all the surface edges using a wire EDM machine, then buffed it with a cloth wheel and polishing compound.

Landon Bardowsky

you scared the crap out of me after you dropped the “gold” around the 7 minute mark lmao. it was funny and i had a great laugh seeing that. looking forward to see more of those kind of jokes in the feature.

swixfr

same lmao

Matt

Great video! I wondered while watching though, could you make your gold mixture a little light on aluminum and then use an aluminum tube to bubble argon and expect that it's sacrificial to some degree?

Seth Dolin

The "Oh no" at 7:51 really got me lol.

Chris WIRVIN

Man! That turned out RAD. I think the open ends look great. Another excellent year of videos. Thanks! Have a great holiday season and wonderful new year.

Kevin Martin

The test for this might be to see if the anneal-to-make-it-purple step still works if done under argon.

Marta

I never liked gold. But this purple one is beautiful. Great project. Thank you!

Jer

Wow, beautiful work, Nile!

TeslaMaster

That makes him sound like a Lovecraft character: Nigel, Creator of Purple Death (by H.P. Lovecraft).

Tuubi

Not a dumb idea, I see the point. Thin film interference could, in theory, be why the heat-treating works on the surface. But I would say that isn't the main mechanism. Mainly because the pieces are immediately purple on the inside when broken. There is no way for a thin film to form that way AFAIK. I suspect that the colour is just very sensitive to the intermetallic lattice which is easily destroyed if sanded or when Al is removed by the acid. Kinda makes me want to run some DFT to see where the bands would sit x3

Gems of Science

Nigel, do you have a microscope? I would have loved to see what that grain looked like at higher magnification, though as a microscopy dork I might be biased.

Paul Fisher

one thing in hindsight, if the ring has the gap, you can potentially go down one size, for a more firmer fit, due to the ring having a little give

Gems of Science

Purple gold is also called "Purple Death", but a video called "Making Purple Death" would probably get you demonetized.

Kilo Juliett

I wonder if the purple/pink color is due to thin film interference? Like the addition of aluminum allows the gold to develop a thin oxide film, and when heated this oxide film becomes thick enough to cause thin film interference effects, similar to temper colors in steel. I think this would explain why the color goes away when sanded (since it's just a layer of oxides sitting on the surface) and must be heated to 600°C to develop color.