Hi all,
Yes, gold is better but only you have to consider corrosion.
IBM makes their SIMM boards with gold interfaces and an extra pin. This
enables them to charge more for RAM based on corrosion factors and
parity reasons for the extra pin. So RAM prices are still high for IBM
machines because only one company makes the chips. Beware.
Sam Held
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Goodman [mailto:goodman@SMCCCD.CC.CA.US]
Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 1999 6:00 PM
To: PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU
Subject: All that glitters is not gold
For years I've been telling my students what someone told me when I was
a
student, that gold is the best conductor, followed by silver, then
copper.
Well, a student showed me a table of resistivities of various metals in
his
text (Serway, 4th ed., p 777) and, low and behold, the order is silver,
copper, then gold. Could it be that this is the order in their PURE
form,
but that the resistivity changes significantly due to surface corrosion
so
that in practice gold wins? If I remember my chemistry, gold is not as
reactive as silver or copper.