Gold transforms from molten liquid to gleaming bar

James Doran Apr 7, 2013 thenational.ae

Watching a bar of gold form before your eyes from molten orange liquid bubbling in a mould to a shiny yellow brick on a dark slab of cold steel, one instantly understands why we prize the element above all others, and why those who could produce it were once considered magicians.

The metal passes through several states as it cools from an almost transparent semi-solid that is so appealing in colour and consistency that it looks almost edible, like caramel cooling into hard candy.

A flawless and brilliant golden surface emerges slowly from this sticky mass until the gold cools completely into the smooth, gleaming bar we covet. The astonishing transformation is so awe-inspiring you can almost hear it.

Monzer Medakka, the managing director of Kaloti Gold, watches this process perhaps hundreds of times a day. What is more, the gold refinery he runs in Sharjah is strewn with the stuff. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gold bars, gold sheets formed in electrolysis baths, and bags of scrap gold brought in to be refined.

There is even a large plastic bin filled with gold sand – a remarkable substance that looks and feels like common or garden construction sand but is in fact made of pure gold… >>MORE(thenational.ae)