What Do Real Gold Look Like

In fact the piece with gold colored particles inside may even be lighter than your other piece of quartz if the gold is not real.

What do real gold look like.

You can also try holding a strong magnet like the kind you can find at hardware stores up to the metal to see if it sticks to it. Fool s gold is made up of crystals and has sharp edges while real gold is a metal with a smoother texture and rounder edges. Fool s gold and other minerals that look like gold will not produce a weight difference between the pieces of quartz. Most specimens of pyrite found in nature will have at least some tarnish on their surface.

Fool s gold tends to be bright and shiny much shinier than actual gold. Gold tarnishing is the slight corrosion of the gold surface and is evident as a dark discoloration of the gold item also called a tarnish film. Real gold will still maintain a diluted glow though not as bright as it would be if in full sunlight. Fool s gold is glittery and bright but if you shade it in your hand it will become dull and drab looking.

If it floats it s probably not real gold since gold is very dense. To tell if gold is real try dropping it into a glass of water. Look at how the gold reflects light. Real gold weighs about 1 5 times more than fool s gold or iron pyrite.

Check out some of the pictures throughout our website of the various gold nuggets and gold specimens. Nuggets or small flakes of gold are usually bright and untarnished. Gold has a golden to yellow color. The environmental protection agency says that gold is commonly alloyed with silver and other metals.

If you search online some will say that real gold tarnishes while others will say that real gold does not tarnish. Once you have seen a few pictures of real gold it is pretty easy to distinguish from the other stuff. Pyrite has a brassy color. Gold can look many different ways in nature but it is important to know the difference between gold and the other minerals.

Most native gold is alloyed with silver and if the silver content is high enough the specimen will have a whitish yellow color. Gold ore can look like quartz with streaks or spotty areas of gold. So indicators of the presence of sulfides like arsenic copper iron and silver may also appear within gold ore. If you look closely at the piece and see that its structure consists of what looks like small and sharp cubes then it is fool s gold.