Platinum & Silver Uses

Platinum
Platinum is an industrial metal. A metal that comes from a family formed by six different metals, platinum, palladium, iridium, osmium, radium and ruthenium. These metals are frequently allied among themselves being the reason why it is not frequent to find them separately.

Platinum is a very valuable metal being its value similar to that of gold. It also has a high specific gravity that sometimes is higher than that of gold, subject to how much iridium it has.

Sometimes, platinum can be found in placer gold deposits, and therefore, will stay trapped in the same system of gold recovery. Sometimes there will be enough platinum so as to get a good profit out of it, so one should not throw it away as with other useless material.

Platinum is almost always a opaque silver color metal, very similar to steel, but different because since it is not magnetic it will not be affected by nitric acid, as steel is. Besides, platinum does not rust.

Platinum generally comes in large and small flakes, as gold does, but sometimes it can also be found in the shape of nuggets.  Platinum does not have very many similarities with mercury (quick-silver) as some other shiny metals do have. However, one can make it have more similarities with mercury by using chemical processes, or by putting mercury a negative electric discharge.

Russia has been, for the last one hundred years or more, the largest platinum metals producer in the world.

If at the beginning you have some difficulty in noticing the difference between platinum and lead, remember that platinum generally has an opaque brilliant silver color, while lead does not shine at all, unless it is polished or covered with a layer of mercury.

Lead and mercury are also easily dissolved by nitric acid, while platinum remains unaltered. Most of the brilliant silver colored metals found in the recovery system will be magnetic, platinum will never be magnetic.

Silver
Most silver mining is done with the hard-rock method for iron extraction of the lodes and then process silver extraction through mechanical and chemical processes. Silver recovered in its majority from placer deposits is still allied to gold and dark sand of the deposits.

Native silver has specific a gravity of 10.5 approximately, so it is considered a heavy metal. If there is silver in the deposits of gold that you exploit, it will also be trapped in the recovery system this which will be very strange.

Silver in its natural form, generally does not look like as if it were a shiny silver color, as general silver jewelry appears to be. Sometimes, native silver is so tarnished one cannot distinguish its color.