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In the laboratory, platinum wire is used for electrodes; platinum pans and supports are used in thermogravimetric analysis because of the stringent requirements of chemical inertness upon heating to high temperatures (~1000 °C). Platinum is used as an alloying agent for various metal products, including fine wires, noncorrosive laboratory ...
Naturally occurring platinum and platinum-rich alloys were known by pre-Columbian Americans for many years. [5] However, even though the metal was used by pre-Columbian peoples, the first European reference to platinum appears in 1557 in the writings of the Italian humanist Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558) as a description of a mysterious metal found in Central American mines between ...
American Platinum Eagle, the official platinum bullion coin of the United States. Investment in platinum is often compared in financial history to gold and silver, which were both known to be used as money in ancient civilizations. Experts posit that platinum is about 15–20 times scarcer than gold and approximately 60–100 times scarcer than ...
Other precious metals include the platinum group metals: ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum, of which platinum is the most widely traded. [1] The demand for precious metals is driven not only by their practical use but also by their role as investments and a store of value. Historically, precious metals have commanded ...
While lists of noble metals can differ, they tend to cluster around gold and the six platinum group metals: ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum. In addition to this term's function as a compound noun, there are circumstances where noble is used as an adjective for the noun metal.
Platinum is a moderately hard metal (MH 3.5) of low mechanical strength, with a close-packed face-centred cubic structure (BCN 12). Compared to other metals in this category, it has an unusually high melting point (2042 K v 1338 for gold).
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Platinum was first used for minting coins in Spanish-colonized America. Following the discovery of platinum in gold rocks, the Spaniards were unable to use it for a long time because they had no technology for processing this metal. The then-cheap platinum was used for various kinds of frauds, such as substituting it for the more expensive silver.