First dip gold in water to find the amount of displacement.
as written above, this is pretty hard.
second, and as an additional point why this doesn't work: you can mix the tungsten with small amounts of some other very cheap element to get the exact density of gold. then, both parts (pure gold, and the tungsten+something mix) have exactly the same density.
Heh.
No.no he's right. you could toss a little platinum in there to offset the weight to have a net equivalent density of gold in the same volume.
in the end you'd really have to go to more complex testing eg ultrasound or conductivity
Platinum? Let's keep things cheap while we're ripping people off. A proper ratio mixture of lead and tungsten could have the exact density of gold.
Show work please, then apologize.
According to my back of the napkin calculation, you'd only need to add 1.5% platinum to tungsten by volume to get the same density as gold. That would be a pretty minimal expense.
You are right. My apologies. Tungsten is .25% lighter than gold, not heavier, and so whatever you mix with tungsten to get the density of gold would have to be denser than gold, not lighter. Platinum would be the cheapest and most obtainable thing to use to mix with tungsten to match gold's density.
19.25W + 21.45P = 19.3 where W is cubic centimeters of tungsten and P is ccs of platinum.
W+P = 1 where we're looking for 1 cc
Solving these two equations gives us P = .02272727. . ccs of platinum and W = .97727 ccs of tungsten
So, if you're having 1 cc of this fake gold, it would be made up of .97727 ccs of tungsten with a mass of 18.8125g, and .02272727ccs of platinum with a mass of .4875g.
18.8125+.4875 = 19.30, exactly what one cc of gold would weigh.
