An ounce of gold can be stretched into a wire 50 miles long.
An Ounce of Gold Makes a 50-Mile Wire
Gold's ductility is nothing short of astonishing. Take a single ounce of this precious metal—roughly the size of a sugar cube—and you could theoretically draw it into a wire that stretches 50 miles. That's far enough to span from downtown Manhattan to the middle of Connecticut, all from something that fits in the palm of your hand.
How Thin Are We Talking?
This 50-mile wire would be just 5 microns wide—about 20 times thinner than a human hair. You'd need a microscope to see it properly. And if you wanted to go even thinner, you could stretch that same ounce into a wire over 1,250 miles long, though at just 1 micron thick, it would be incredibly fragile.
This extreme ductility makes gold invaluable in electronics, where ultra-fine gold wires create reliable connections in circuit boards, smartphones, and satellites. These wires can conduct electricity efficiently while taking up virtually no space.
What Makes Gold So Stretchy?
Gold's exceptional ductility comes from its atomic structure. It has a face-centered cubic (FCC) crystal arrangement, which allows atoms to slide past each other under stress without breaking apart. Think of it like a perfectly organized stack of oranges—push one layer, and the whole thing can shift without collapsing.
Platinum comes close to gold's ductility (both can produce about 2 kilometers of wire per gram), but gold holds the crown. A single gram of gold yields approximately 2 kilometers of wire, while platinum achieves similar lengths using specialized techniques like the Wollaston process.
Other Champions of Ductility
Gold isn't alone in this superpower. Other highly ductile metals include:
- Silver — Nearly as ductile as gold and more conductive
- Copper — Widely used in electrical wiring for its balance of ductility and affordability
- Aluminum — Lightweight and ductile, perfect for aerospace applications
- Platinum — Incredibly ductile and corrosion-resistant
But none quite match gold's combination of extreme ductility, malleability, and resistance to corrosion. It's why ancient Egyptian gold artifacts still gleam after thousands of years, and why gold remains the metal of choice for everything from wedding rings to spacecraft components.
So the next time you see a gold necklace or ring, remember: that tiny amount of metal contains enough atomic flexibility to stretch from here to the horizon and back again.