Buzz
Silver may be overlooked next to gold, but it often surpasses its shiny counterpart in many ways. The element, with its cool hue, is not only more conductive and reflective but also has unique properties—such as its interaction with light, which gave rise to the term “silver screen.” Keep reading to discover more.
1. SILVER HAS BEEN USED BY HUMANS SINCE 3000 BCE.
Historical evidence shows that silver (or Ag, element number 47) has been mined and used by humans for at least 5,000 years. Silver can be found in ancient mine slag heaps in Turkey and Greece, as well as in deposits throughout China, Korea, Japan, and South America. Its brilliant shine made it a favorite for jewelry, ornamental objects, and practical items like silverware. Due to its scarcity, silver was highly valued. It is credited with playing a key role in the rise of classical Athens, and the Vikings used “hacksilver”—pieces of silver bullion cut from a larger block—as currency.
2. SOME INDIGENOUS CULTURES MASTERED THE ART OF SILVERSMITHING.
Silver, a soft and pliable metal, can be easily smelted, though it still requires a certain level of heat. In the precolonial Americas, metal workers lacked bellows to oxygenate the fire. Instead, they would gather around the fire and blow through tubes to intensify its heat. The Inca of the Andes became skilled silversmiths and believed that gold was the sweat of the sun, while silver was the tears of the moon.
3. SILVER IS THE MOST EFFICIENT CONDUCTOR OF ELECTRICITY AMONG ALL METALS.
Silver is the finest conductor of both heat and electricity, making it ideal for numerous applications. It is used in metal solder, electrical components, printed circuit boards, and batteries. However, due to its high cost, copper is often substituted for silver in electrical wiring.
4. ITS SENSITIVITY TO LIGHT MADE THE DEVELOPMENT OF EARLY PHOTOGRAPHY POSSIBLE.
In the 1720s, German scientist Johann Heinrich Schulze produced the first images using silver. After discovering that chalk dipped in silver nitrate darkened when exposed to sunlight, Schulze placed stencils on a glass jar filled with a chalk and silver nitrate mixture. When he exposed the jar to sunlight, the light “printed” the stencil’s letters onto the chalk. A century later, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre developed photographic prints on silver-coated copper plates. At the same time, British chemist William Henry Fox Talbot invented a method for developing images on silver iodide-coated paper using gallic acid.
“The result was viewed as magical, a devilish art. But this mysterious process of creating an invisible image was simply a reduction reaction,” says science reporter Victoria Gill on the Royal Society of Chemistry’s podcast Chemistry in its Element. “Hollywood might never have existed without the chemical reaction that gave celluloid film its ability to capture images and bring them to the now-iconic silver screen.” Silver salts continue to play a vital role in creating high-quality images.
5. THIS SAME REACTIVITY CAN ALSO CAUSE SILVER TO TARNISH.
Silver reacts with sulfur in the air, forming a layer of tarnish that can darken or change the color of the metal. This tarnish affects silver’s ability to reflect light, often turning it black, gray, or even shades of purple, orange, and red. You can observe this process at home: Place a quartered, shelled hard-boiled egg (preferably still warm) in the same container as a silver item, such as a spoon, and seal the container. Within an hour, the tarnish will begin to form due to the egg’s hydrogen sulfide gas, and it will continue to darken over time.
6. SCIENTISTS CONTINUE TO STUDY SILVER’S ANTIMICROBIAL EFFECTS.
A 2009 review indicated that before the advent of modern antibiotics in the 1940s, silver was one of the most crucial anti-microbial agents. The ancient Macedonians were likely the first to use silver plates on surgical wounds, while doctors during World War I applied silver to prevent infections when stitching up injuries. Silver is lethal to bacteria but harmless to humans, unless consumed in large amounts. Excessive silver intake can result in argyria, a condition where the skin permanently turns gray or blue due to silver’s reaction with light.
A 2013 study in Science Transitional Medicine explored how silver’s anti-microbial effects work. The results suggested that silver increases the permeability of bacterial cells and disrupts their metabolism. When small amounts of silver were combined with antibiotics, the drugs eradicated between 10 and 1000 times more bacteria than they would on their own. “It’s not quite a silver bullet; more like a silver spoon helping [bacteria] take their medicine,” said lead researcher James Collins, a biomedical engineer at Boston University, to Nature.
7. SILVER IODIDE CAN INFLUENCE RAINFALL.
In regions experiencing drought, scientists can stimulate rainfall by “seeding” clouds with silver iodide particles. In the 1940s, Bernard Vonnegut (brother of author Kurt Vonnegut) showed that silver iodide helps water molecules freeze, which could theoretically lead to precipitation in the form of snow. In 2018, researchers from the University of Colorado in Boulder and other institutions proved this process in actual clouds. The team deployed two planes: one to spray silver iodide and the other to track its course and observe how the water particles responded. The second plane recorded a zigzag pattern of water particles freezing along the same flight path as the spraying plane, confirming silver iodide’s role in cloud seeding.
Bernard Vonnegut made this discovery while he and his brother both worked at General Electric in Schenectady, New York. The two discussed the concept of water stabilized as ice at room temperature—a concept Kurt Vonnegut later explored as ice-nine in his novel Cat’s Cradle.
8. SILVER IS BEHIND THE CREATION OF MANY GHOST TOWNS.
During George Washington’s presidency, the United States adopted a “bimetallic” currency system, which required the federal government to buy millions of ounces of silver annually to mint coins and back paper currency. This government demand for silver played a key role in the rise of Western mining towns during the mid-1800s, especially with the passing of the 1890 Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which increased federal purchases of silver.
However, as silver’s value dropped relative to gold, the Sherman Act was repealed, causing the price of silver to plummet. Mining towns that had once flourished with hundreds of residents quickly shrank, some reduced to only a few people, while others were entirely deserted. Today, ghost towns (or near-ghost towns) like Bullionville, El Dorado, Potosi, and Midas remain in Nevada, the Silver State, where they can still be explored.
