When people buy gold jewelry in the store, the seller often describes it in terms of karats (abbreviated kt or K). The gold jewelries are made with different karat, such as 10 karat, 12 karat, 14 karat, and 18 karat. High karat gold jewelries are more expensive. Well, what exactly does the "karat" mean?
What is the karat?
Karat is a unit of purity for gold alloys, rather than weight. The word "karat" is from the carob seed, which was used as balance scales to measure the weight of gold in ancient Asian bazaars.
What is Gold Karat?
Since the pure gold is too soft to make exquisite jewelries. Therefore, the gold jewelries are almost alloy which are mixed with other metals, such as silver, copper, or zinc. Pure gold is 24 karats. A unit karat of gold is equal to 1/24 part (4.1667%). The gold karat shows how many parts of gold and how many parts of other metals in a gold jewelry. The following chart shows the differences between the different karats, and also shows the percentage of gold and other metals.
How to test the purity of gold?
There are two common methods to test gold for its purity, Acid Test Kits and Electronic Testing Kits. However, any acid testing will lose some small amount of gold.
