Chapter 13 Summary

 Kean starts off talking about a prince by the name of Midas. It goes on to share his reign and the gold and bronze age, seeing as to how the people of 3000 BC could not recognize the difference between bronze and other metals with zinc in them. This introduced the idea of counterfeiting, which was the main relation between the elements. He then goes onto talking about gold and gold rushes. There was a huge gold rush in Australia where you could literally just pick the gold off of the ground. However, once the population boomed and mining became the priority along with building to supply the growing need for housing, it became apparent that resources had huge inflation prices. Just to make the situation even worse, the rocks they were “throwing away” from mining and building with happened to contain the most gold. 

    Then the chapter moves onto paper money. Starting in China, Kean moves into talking about counterfeiting techniques and how troublesome it would have been in order to counterfeit an EU bill. One way counterfeiting is combatted is by using europium strips that glow under special light, making it easier to distinguish real bills from fake bills. Next, the value of aluminum is talked about. Aluminum was once a precious metal, valued over even gold. However, once a scientist was able to find a way to extract pure aluminum, the market for the metal crashed and it is now used for everyday items.