Ask @Archimedes.
Well, wrapping a scroll around a metal rod then placing it inside a metal tube inside a jar would help to preserve the scroll for a relatively long time, so long as the jar and contents were kept dry. After a few hundred years some rot or corrosion would probably set in, but you’d be okay for a few lifetimes.
As I understand it, Archimedes method tells the difference between pure gold and gold alloy.
Can it tell the difference between an alloy, and an electroplated item?
Yes. It’s measuring the volume vs the weight of an item, or it’s density. Gold has a high density. Other metals not so much. An electroplated metal item would have a lower density than pure gold.
OK here’s one, sort of. Topical maybe with the latest “news”. Supposedly, so the story goes, there was a UFO that crashed in the 1890s, somewhere down in Texas, and (I guess) there was a local newspaper report about it, that alien bodies were found. The town folk gave the unfortunate traveller’s a “Christian burial” at the local cemetery. This is a commonly cited “evidence” by UFO ologists. So it would be surprising if the supposed alien bodies have not been exhumed by somebody, if the story is true it would be interesting to know what it really was that they thought was an alien spacecraft in the 19th century.
Another “interesting” tale that sounded intriguing, I think it was mentioned on a particular tour of a large estate or castle, there was large wooden trunk from medieval times that had a warning “To be opened only if the castle is in great danger” which I cannot believe anybody would leave unopened. It’s a great story though.
“Greek Fire” is something early writers mentioned, but based on the descriptions and characteristics nobody is quite sure what it was actually made up of.
In more recent examples, archaeologists have uncovered a couple paddle wheel steamers that sank in the Missouri, bound for Great Falls or wherever, full of trade goods and supplies. There are a fair number of gee-gaws and thingamawhatsits - obviously some sort of tool to do … something. But there’s nobody left alive who remembers.
Okay, I don’t know this science stuff. But suppose you had two items, identical in appearance.
One is made from an alloy of 90% lead and 10% gold.
One is a 90% lead core, with a 10% shell of gold.
Identical quantities of lead and gold in both items, just differently distributed.
Wouldn’t they have the same volume and the same weight, and the same ratio between them? Could Archimedes tell the difference between them?
Assume they are both the same colour. And a spherical cow.
Electroplating was also done to items made of wood, bone, and stone. You name it. Hell they probably made those tacky plated roses and Susan B. Anthony dollars with it too. The fact there weren’t any gold or silver or copper plated artifacts found or associated with what may be an electric cell doesn’t bother me, as far as that goes. Everything ends up in the melting pot sooner or later.
Well, as the song says “No one knows who they were, or what they were doing” We also know that Stonehenge is “Where the demons dwell” and “Where the banshees live and they do live well”
No. This is why a dependable, easy method of determining authenticity was kind of a big deal. Non destructive analysis, as it were. Otherwise you need to do assay, which is a pain. Gold is almost impossible to fake, one of the key attributes described to Money. But if you have a Big Ass Bar of it, there is a possibility of a fake. There are more modern ways to test, but Archimedes description is still a valid test, or one of them.
In any event the question put to Archimedes was whether the goldsmith had pocketed some of the gold he was given and made up the difference with base metal. The same total weight with some of the gold replaced by less dense metal would be larger; what Archimedes really did was hit upon a precise way of measuring an irregularly shaped object’s volume.
The typical thickness of electroplating usually ranges from 0.0001 inch to 0.020 inch
No where near 10%.
Right - without having to saw it open and take a look see? Even today, when someone buys a Big Ass Gold Bar, they don’t ordinarily leave the commodities exchange. A bar gets assayed, has a serial number, and is officially accepted. The owner can “take delivery” but in order for it to be accepted onto the exchange again it would need to be assayed all over again. They don’t want to take too many chances.
Tungsten is hard to work with, but the scammers have figured out how to make bars that are very convincing. Maybe it is sintered tungsten, with a .999 good coating. Years ago, seems to me it was Lebanon maybe, had a cottage industry that was turning out numismatic fakes of certain gold coins. They were careful to use the proper gold & copper alloy of genuine coins, they were strictly made for the collector market added value, the gold content was exactly the same.
Shopkeepers had small scales, that were precisely made of a certain size, and balance. A counterfeit or fake gold coin could either be the right size, or the right weight, though not both.
Non-conductive substrates such as plastic, bone wood, or glass cannot be electroplated unless first made conductive. This is done by coating the non-conductive substrate in a layer of conductive paint or spray - which we also have no evidence that they had.
Who is “they”? Electroplating was common in the ancient world. What evidence is lacking?
Other than the debunked evidence of electroplating in the ancient world what other examples can you provide?
“They” are the people who lived in Baghdad 2000 years ago. I was addressing your claim that wood and bone can be electroplated. It can’t - unless you first spray it with a layer of conductive paint. We have no evidence that the people of Baghdad (in roughly 250 BCE to CE 250) had conductive paint or a sprayer to apply it with.
All that is aside from the fact that we don’t have evidence that ‘they’ produced electroplated items in the first place.
In the spirit of the Dope, we might examine this one as well. The ‘alien grave’ is in Aurora, Texas, and has a Wikipedia page about it.
So probably a hoax. Interesting that Haydon should choose a Martian as the subject of a hoax, so soon after the serialisation of War of the Worlds began.
A bit vague, and I wonder if you have more details. There’s a ‘sealed chest’ legend associated with Whittington Castle on the Welsh Marches, but that chest has been taken out the castle to an ‘unknown location’. Curiously, Whittington Castle is also associated with the ‘Marian Chalice’, which may also be the Holy Grail.
Or it may not.