Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Bobebam. Here, Martin Frobisher thought he'd hit
Speaker 1: the jackpot. The year fifteen seventy six found this English
Speaker 1: explorer and legal pirate. He was sanctioned by the crown
Speaker 1: to plunder enemy treasure ships seeking the Northwest Passage, the
Speaker 1: undiscovered Arctic sea route that links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Speaker 1: He found something else instead, Labrador, Canada and what's now
Speaker 1: Frobisher Bay. But weeks later he sailed west and reached
Speaker 1: icy Baffin Island, where he gathered a mineral sample that
Speaker 1: seemed to be flaked with gold. But it wasn't well,
Speaker 1: not according to the royalist sayer, who identified the shiny
Speaker 1: bits as pye rite, also known as fool's gold. Undeterred,
Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth's merchants sent Frobisher back to Baffin, where he
Speaker 1: gathered and shipped fourteen hundred tons of ore, most of
Speaker 1: it was worthless. In a few tested samples, the gold
Speaker 1: content was only five to fourteen parts per billion. Though
Speaker 1: he longed to abandon Baffin and go exploring again, Frobisher
Speaker 1: spent years fruitlessly hunting Arctic treasure. And it was all
Speaker 1: because of that, Pie, write. Captain Christopher Newport could likely sympathize.
Speaker 1: As the leader of Jamestown, England's first permanent settlement in
Speaker 1: North America, he was constantly getting tricked by new world
Speaker 1: gold that turned out to be you guessed at Pie, write.
Speaker 1: So let's say you're a prospector, or maybe just a
Speaker 1: bright eyed field geologist. How do you avoid Pye, writes, trickery.
Speaker 1: Before we get into that, it might be a good
Speaker 1: idea to explain what pyrite actually is in the first place.
Speaker 1: Real gold is a chemical element, a substance that no
Speaker 1: ordinary chemical process like electrolysis or heating can break down.
Speaker 1: If you've got a classroom periodic table handy, look for
Speaker 1: gold between platinum and mercury. Gold's chemical symbol is au,
Speaker 1: derived from that element's Latin language name aurum. A fun
Speaker 1: way to remember this is to say to yourself, hey,
Speaker 1: you give me back my gold. But pyrite is different.
Speaker 1: Unlike gold, It's a compound made up of two different elements,
Speaker 1: iron and sulfur, and that's why it's sometimes referred to
Speaker 1: by the name iron sulfide. Scientists write out pyrites chemical
Speaker 1: formula as F E S two. You see iron and
Speaker 1: Sulfur's chemical symbols are FE and S, respectively, and each
Speaker 1: pyrite molecule contains one iron atom along with two sulfur atoms.
Speaker 1: And telling golden pyrite apart. Really isn't that difficult If
Speaker 1: you know what you're doing. Ever watch the Olympics, then
Speaker 1: you'll probably know those world class athletes love to bite
Speaker 1: their gold medals in front of the cameras. Seriously. It
Speaker 1: happens a lot, and the practice comes from the old
Speaker 1: belief that one can bite gold coins to see if
Speaker 1: their counterfeit. Most supposedly, nibbling on any coin with the
Speaker 1: high enough gold content will leave bite marks behind. The
Speaker 1: truth is a little more complicated, but the custom does
Speaker 1: have a basis. In fact. On the Most scale, which
Speaker 1: rates the hardness of gems and minerals, gold has a
Speaker 1: ranking of just two point five to three as elements go.
Speaker 1: It's rather soft, so a gold nugget can easily be
Speaker 1: scratched with a pocket knife. Pyrite has the advantage here.
Speaker 1: It's a bit harder, coming in at a six to
Speaker 1: six point five on the most scale. Forget knives. You
Speaker 1: need a high quality metal file to scratch this stuff.
Speaker 1: Steel hammers are another tool that can give the game away.
Speaker 1: Hit some pyrite with one of these beauties and it'll
Speaker 1: send sparks flying. If you're persistent enough, the pirate will
Speaker 1: shatter and eventually get reduced to a powder. And none
Speaker 1: of that will happen when you strike gold with a hammer.
Speaker 1: No sparks, no powder. Instead, you might just end up
Speaker 1: expanding or flattening the sample. Not only as gold soft,
Speaker 1: it's malleable to boot. Visually, both materials are yellowish, but
Speaker 1: gold is less brassy in hue. It also does not
Speaker 1: form cube shaped crystals as pyrite often does. On the contrary,
Speaker 1: most of the gold encountered in the field takes the
Speaker 1: form of either flakes or lumpy nuggets. Gold will also
Speaker 1: leave a yellow streak behind if it's rubbed against a
Speaker 1: bit of porcelain or white ceramic tile, and repeat the
Speaker 1: same experiment with pyrite, and it will leave a darker
Speaker 1: greenish black line. If you're still in doubt, the nose nose.
Speaker 1: Although gold is pretty much odorless, pyrite has a faint smell,
Speaker 1: and it smells like rotten eggs. Again, it's loaded with sulfur.
Speaker 1: But where things can get confusing is golden pyrites sometimes
Speaker 1: turn up in the same deposits. Remember Frobisher's or did
Speaker 1: contain some genuine gold, albeit a teeny tiny amount. If
Speaker 1: real gold keeps eluding, you, don't despair. Fool's gold is
Speaker 1: not completely useless. Like we already mentioned. It can be
Speaker 1: used to produce sparks and or by start fires that
Speaker 1: made Pye write a valuable commodity in ancient and prehistoric societies. Indeed,
Speaker 1: the word pye write itself came from a Greek term
Speaker 1: for firestone, and the future may bring a new appreciation
Speaker 1: for iron sulfide. In Scientists at the University of Minnesota
Speaker 1: used electric voltage and an ionic solution to successfully turn
Speaker 1: pyrite into a magnetic material. This breakthrough could lead to
Speaker 1: low cost sulfur based solar cells down the road, giving
Speaker 1: Fool's gold of bright future in the green energy industry.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other
Speaker 1: bright topics, visit how Stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is production of by Heart Radio or more podcasts My
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