Is Real Gold Magnetic?

Is gold magnetic? Hi, I'm Steve Moriarty from MoreGems.com, and we're going to check into this factor of gold. We are going to test all these materials with a powerful magnet. This is our magnet. If I could borrow your hand, Michael, I'll show you just how powerful it is. Get this in the right spot. There we go, right through his hand. That's a pretty powerful magnet. Here's our samples. First, there's a meteorite. Of course, it is nickel-iron and very magnetic. So the nickel doesn't have any effect on it. This is fool's gold. Now, I would think this would be magnetic because it's mostly iron. It's iron sulfide, but not magnetic at all, as far as I can tell.

Here are different qualities of gold. I think this is 10 karat, and I don't detect any magnetic effect with 10 karat gold. 14 karat gold, no effect there. And this is 21 karat, which is a US gold coin. So none of those are magnetic. Here's platinum, also not magnetic. So here's an unknown metal, definitely magnetic. So we know it's not gold. And one tricky little thing that if you happen to go and just test the clasp on this, it's magnetic. Must not be gold. Nope, there's an iron spring inside the clasp. So don't be testing clasps. So to answer the question, is gold magnetic? Absolutely not. So if you'd like to see more educational videos, like and subscribe to MoreGems.com. And I'm Steve Moriarty.