Fun facts about Silver

Did you know that Silver is one of the most essential components of every electronic device, such as laptops, cellphones, tablet PCs and even toasters?

A few fun facts:   

•     Silver kills bacteria by chemically affecting their cell membranes, thereby breaking them down. Bacteria do not develop resistance to Silver, as they do to many antibiotics.

•     Today, Peru and Mexico are the largest producers of silver.

•     In fourteen languages, the words for silver and money are the same.

•     24,171 silver-coated, quartz tiles protected NASA's Magellan spacecraft from overheating under twice the solar radiation experienced orbiting the earth.

•     A new silver-lithium-aluminum alloy is the strongest wrought aluminum alloy known. It has been used on several of the NASA space shuttle missions.

•     Over 1.5 billion silver oxide-zinc batteries are supplied to world markets yearly, including miniature-sized batteries for watches, cameras and small electronic devices, and larger batteries for tools and commercial portable TV cameras.

•     Throughout history, more people have used silver for money than gold.

•     Silver production and secondary recovery have failed to meet demand each year of the last fifteen years.

•     Silver is the best conductor of heat of all elements. Its uses in solar panels and automobile rear window defoggers take advantage of this quality.

•     Silver coins have the highest degree of optical reflectivity of all bullion. A Silver mirror can reflect about 95% of the visible light spectrum.

    And one of the most important things...

Silver has more industrial applications than gold does, with more uses being developed.
In most applications, Silver CANNOT BE SUBSTITUTED BY ANY OTHER METAL!