What is pure gold and what is from a compound etc?
Pure gold is just that, Au. it is an element and we use the empirical formula to describe it: Au a compound is a chemical substance composed of more than one element, and those elements are present in a definite ratio, so CO is a different compound from CO2; and connected in a definite way, so the molecular formula C4H10 represents two compounds, they are butane and 2-methylpropane. My gold wedding ring is a mixture of different metallic elements. It is an alloy, the metals are not in a definite ratio and they do not have a definite structure – different connections between the metals would still represent the same alloy. The alloy is not a compound, it is a solution, a mixture of the metals in the solid state. Gold is the solvent and copper is a solute.
