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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 1282376, member: 27832&quot;]I agree that .999 and higher purity isn&#039;t a practical consideration for monetary use, but there&#039;s at least one application where it&#039;s quite critical -- semiconductors. <a href="http://www.allchemie.com/group-1b.html#gol" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.allchemie.com/group-1b.html#gol" rel="nofollow">Here&#039;s a company</a> that offers gold in four, five or six 9&#039;s purity (up to 99.9999% pure).</p><p><br /></p><p>I wouldn&#039;t downplay the emotional element, either. As you say, increasing purity doesn&#039;t always affect material properties. But the alchemists of old didn&#039;t know that, so they drove for centuries to achieve an ultimate state of purity. They couldn&#039;t, of course, but the techniques they developed formed the foundations of modern practical chemistry -- which, I would argue, is <i>quite</i> important to us all.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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