Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?

[Userremoved]

[citation][nom]sviola[/nom]Yes. It says in the article: Source: Tom's Hardware FR[/citation]
Ok thanks!

 

[grieve]

I think it be easier to cook up some Meth...

 

[brando56894]

I love chemistry, why the hell does my university have to make the exams insanely hard?

 

[hundredislandsboy]

What would be really cool, even better, is if they dropped that BB into some water and it turned into a motherboard, like those super dried up sponge dinosaurs that grow 10X in a bowl of water?

 

[marraco]

But how many motherboards contained thath little ball of gold?

 

[eddieroolz]

Good article Tom's France! It was a really enjoyable read.

Kinda sad how that huge pile of pins resulted in only a tiny gold BB. But it is in miniscule amounts, after all 😛

 

[Guest]

Those are some pretty expensive 6mm BBs you have there sir!

 

[JonnyDough]

I just hope that the corporations mining PC parts for gold recycle a lot of other elements and plastics as well.

 

[Guest]

nice job, very nice article, a nice addition of old fun to the overly commercialized tomshardware.

And as anotherone said, give it to a geek girl and break her heart (but not earings, just something a little bit more crude -hammer it if you like lol)

 

[hillarymakesmecry]

That gold BB is worth waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than $2-3.

IF it's 24k then it'd probably worth a good bit more. It's 5grams of gold!

 

[Yannick_G_THFR]

[citation][nom]hillarymakesmecry[/nom]That gold BB is worth waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than $2-3.IF it's 24k then it'd probably worth a good bit more. It's 5grams of gold![/citation]

What ?!?
It's only +/- 0.1g 😀

 

[XAKEP]

Nice one guys !

 

[vexun11]

I thought that BB would be worth a lot more then afew $ at least like 20$

 

[Guest]

I wonder if the chemicals cost more than the three dollar gold BB.

 

[elmo2006]

Cool, but happens to the remaining chemical that I assume can no longer be used. I guess done the old ceramic bowl is out of the question?

 

[Guest]

What they forget is that nowadays Some Ic's Circuits are made with micro diamonds

 

[tomc100]

LMAO! This is the most hilarious thing I've read and it brings back memories of hours spent in the chemistry lab in college. The materials needed to produce this gold costs more than the gold itself.

 

[jschodde]

This article struck a cord with me...

Back in college, I was a chemistry major and looking for a job. My chemistry teacher caught wind of a local company doing exactly what you describe here only on an industrial level. Sadly, that company was not using safety measures at all and was using cyanide solutions as part of their process. I witnessed open buckets of solution bubbling from heat with cyanide vapors coming off them! Needless to say I high-tailed it out of there and never looked back.

 

[Mizoguchi]

Hooray for AP Chem coming in handy!

 

[tigsounds]

Today's homework assignment:

What was the circuit board conductive foil made of in the original IBM PC-XT computer? Clue: It was not copper !

 

[brows]

I can see the internet companies springing up now ...
www.dollars4motherboards.com

 

[hundredislandsboy]

Today's homework assignment:

What was the circuit board conductive foil made of in the original IBM PC-XT computer? Clue: It was not copper !

Was it tin?

 

[Guest]

Very interesting article..i never known this

 

[DeanKeaton259]

Heh, really cool article. It remind me of Gen. Chem lab. I hated chem so much. I'm sure I would've liked it a whole lot more if we did experiments like this one.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

What happened to the rest of the toxic mess from this experiment? I hope TH is green-friendly and properly disposed the sludge in an way that would be approved by the environment activists?