# monatomic gold

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/monatomic-gold/359839>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 8, 2006, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/monatomic-gold/359839 "2006-06-08T03:37:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Folly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/folly/32/3219_2.png) [@Folly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Folly)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/monatomic-gold/359839/1 "2006-06-08T03:37:01Z")

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What’s the straight dope on monatomic gold?  
How is it created?  
What is it useful for and can you do anything cool with it.

Google searches just get me [del]snake-oil salesman[/del] entrepreneurs like this [http://www.whitepowdergold.com/](http://www.whitepowdergold.com/)

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**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/monatomic-gold/359839/2 "2006-06-08T04:13:11Z")

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[Synthesis of Colloidal Gold](http://mrsec.wisc.edu/Edetc/nanolab/gold/index.html) -with Movies! 🆒

[A little history of colloidal gold](http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/research/highlights_archive/alfalfa.html)

> [@](#):
>
> The book of Exodus reports that Moses destroyed the golden calf in a manner that may have resulted in an aqueous (water-based) gold colloid, which he then forced the Israelites to drink.

Monatomic gold is just colloidal gold with a small particle size. Then again whitepowder sites seems to imply that they use the term monatomic to refer to the one gold atom in a molecule of [AuCl](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorauric_acid).

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**Author:** ![scm1001](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c4cdca/32.png) [@scm1001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scm1001)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/monatomic-gold/359839/3 "2006-06-08T10:25:31Z")

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monoatomic gold exists. It is what happens when you heat gold above its boiling point and it vaporises.

All gold compounds you can make or buy at room temperature have gold bonded to something - either other gold atoms (in which case you have gold metal or colloids see above links) or other atoms such as Cl. Some gold compounds do appear to have some antimicrobrial action. I am not sure if colloidal gold has any microbrial effect, though colloidal silver appears too.

Anything else is snake oil