“The Maltese Falcon” (TCM/Satellite)

The Maltese Falcon.

John Houston, Bogart, and Lorre, what a combination. I realized I’d seen this before, I remember the overacting.

The problem with a an object supposedly made of gold but substituded with lead, is lead weighs a lot less. The specific gravity of lead at 11.35 is about only 59% that of gold at 19.32. The only element remotely cheap enough that weighs approximately the same is tungsten. The next closest element that is not very expensive (osmium, iridium, platinum, rhenium, tantalum) or radioactive (neptunium, plutonium, uranium, proctactinium, californium, berkelium, americium) is mercury, at only 13.55. This presents special problems being a liquid and highly toxic. After that are some more exotic toxic, expensive or radioactive elements (curium, halfnium, rhodium, ruthenium, palladium, thallium, thorium, technetium), and finally we get back to lead, and silver just after it at 10.5. It is actually very difficult to fake gold, unless you can work tungsten (which is very expensive, while the element itself isn’t that rare).

On the other hand, gold is very rare (only one stable isotope and no common decay chain paths to it), and very easy to work with (soft), and to find pure (as nuggets), and recognize when found (one of very very few colorful elemental metals, like copper and cesium). This, you might realize, explains why gold is so coveted. Some elements are rarer, some are easier to work with, some are easier to recognize, some resist corrosion better, some are more valuable, some are less toxic, less radioactive, etc. But none balance these properties out as uniquely as gold. Having once held a bar of gold, I can tell you, there is no mistaking anything else for it. Although before platinum was practical to work with, it was sometimes passed off as gold (hence the name little silver).