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