You are hiking in the mountains and find a shiny gold nugget. It might be the element gold, or it might be “fool’s gold,” which is a nickname for iron pyrite, FeS₂. Which of the following physical properties do you think would help determine if the shiny nugget is really gold—appearance, melting point, density, or physical state?

Video transcript

Hi everyone today, we have a question telling us that amethyst silicon dioxide are commonly used as a substitute to sapphire aluminum oxide, which of the fallen can be used to distinguish amethyst from sapphires. So let's first look at a melting points for amethyst, It has a melting point of 1713 degrees Celsius. For sapphire, It has a melting point of 72°C be appearance. They are commonly used to substitute sapphire. So appearance isn't going to help us see refractive index for amethyst. It is 1. for saff I It is 1.768 and those are too close for us to really distinguish them apart. So C is also incorrect. So our answer here is a melting point. Thank you for watching. Bye.