Not being good in chemistry and being too lazy to spend hours looking it up on the web, I thought I’d ask here.
Are all of the more common precious metals similarly related to each other? Like gold, silver, platinum and titanium? Each of these, in refined form, have a touch texture unlike any others. You know, that smooth almost soft feel?
None of the other metals seem to have this, at least those I’ve been able to actually touch. Even refined nickel doesn’t have the same feel as those 4, though it is close.
Gold, silver, and platinum—together with rhenium, ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, and–share certain properties and are sometimes grouped together as the noble metals. Gold, silver, and the platinum group metals (platinum, iridium, and palladium) are also referred to as “precious metals”.
I’ve never heard of titanium referred to as a precious metal. Chemically, it’s a member of Group IVb, and is chemically related to zirconium and hafnium. All three have various industrial and high-tech uses.
Copper, silver, and gold are all in the same column (or family) of the Periodic Table, which means that their outer electrons are all arranged similarly, which in turn means that they have similar properties. Platinum is the next column over, and in that particular region of the Table, adjacent columns also have similar properties. Palladium and iridium are also in that vicinity, but I don’t think that titanium is.
Well, that almost answers the question, except for Copper. Pure finished copper doesn’t have the same feel to it that the gold, silver and platinum do. You know, that silky smooth-soft feel. I’ve worked with polished copper and no matter how it is finished, it never gets that ‘feel’ to it.
I might have been mistaken to include Titanium, because I’ve only handled things coated with it.
[trivia] Copper, silver, and gold are called the “coinage metals.” [/trivia]