The Pot of Gold

It's not at the end of the rainbow

I’ve long had this vision that the pot of gold is not at the end of the rainbow, but that the rainbow is made out of gold. And when you love the science of metallurgy as much as I do, it is easy to see why.

The basics of Metal alloying

Here is a little about how it works. Pure gold is yellow and called 24k gold. The lower the karat (22k, 18k, 14k, 10k...), the more alloys it has in it. Rose gold has a copper alloy to give it that pink color. Green gold is gold alloyed with silver. White gold is alloyed with a white metal like nickel or palladium.  There are even some colors like purple gold (but it is unstable in many aspects, so we won’t get into the anomalies for now).

Anyway, as a lover of metal, metallurgy, and experimenting with materials, I love seeing what is possible with all these different colors. It turns out that time as a business owner and a mom doesn't leave me with tons of Research and Development time, but I am conically drawn to these colors and have made a little time here and there to work on fabricating with these. As the rainbow colors build, they almost trick the eye, but if you look one second longer, it looks like a slick of oil catching the light. Rotating these metals back and forth in the sunlight as a subtle rainbow appears brings a smile to my face every time.