section_path: Characteristics
section_name: Characteristics
paragraph_text: Characteristics
  
  Gold is the most malleable of all metals. It can be drawn into a wire of single-atom width, and then stretched considerably before it breaks. Such nanowires distort via the formation, reorientation, and migration of dislocations and crystal twins without noticeable hardening. A single gram of gold can be beaten into a sheet of 1 square metre (11 sq ft), and an avoirdupois ounce into 28 square metres (300 sq ft). Gold leaf can be beaten thin enough to become semi-transparent. The transmitted light appears greenish-blue because gold strongly reflects yellow and red. Such semi-transparent sheets also strongly reflect infrared light, making them useful as infrared (radiant heat) shields in the visors of heat-resistant suits and in sun visors for spacesuits. Gold is a good conductor of heat and electricity.
  
  Gold has a density of 19.3 g/cm, almost identical to that of tungsten at 19.25 g/cm; as such, tungsten has been used in the counterfeiting of gold bars, such as by plating a tungsten bar with gold. By comparison, the density of lead is 11.34 g/cm, and that of the densest element, osmium, is 22.588 ± 0.015 g/cm.