Customers Who Want to Sell Gold in Merritt Island, Titusville, and Rockledge, FL, Benefit From XRF Spectrometer Technology at Park Avenue Gold Exchange. Read Below To Learn More.
People who sell gold at Park Avenue Gold Exchange have come to see why Spectrometer testing ensures them of a fair deal, and the highest prices possible for their gold. Customers enjoy seeing the exact metallic composition of their items displayed right in front of them when their items are tested. A man comes to us with a watch band to sell gold from Rockledge, just up the highway, wanting to cash in on the record high gold prices seen in recent years. The spectrometer tells him exactly how much gold is in the watch band, and what other metals the gold has been combined with to make the band too. Just for fun, do you want to know how much iron, copper, or zinc are in the pendant that one of our friends who wants to sell gold on Merritt Island brings us? The spectrometer tells her the precise percentages of each metal in the pendant. Providing customer’s with this type of precision in testing, private consultations offered by appointment only, and taking the time to educate each customer about their sale, is collectively what has built Park Avenue Gold Exchange’s reputation for honesty, great customer service, and high prices.
But, how does a spectrometer actually work?
A customer recently came into the Space Coast location of Park Avenue Gold Exchange in Cocoa FL wanting to sell gold from Titusville. Specifically, this gentleman wanted to sell a gold ring that had been sitting in a closet for years and was now worth WAY more than he had paid for it. More than anything though, he had heard about the spectrometer and wanted to see the thing actually work! If you’re like me, you can hardly blame him. We’re curious, right? We want to know what’s under the hood. So, without getting too technical, we did a little research and what follows is a summary of what I learned.
There are different types of spectrometers that are used to measure the elements that make up items in our everyday world. There are spectrometers used for testing food for impurities, testing children’s toys to make sure that harmful elements like lead are not introduced to the toys during manufacturing, etc. We use a spectrometer to tell us how much gold, silver, and other precious metals, are present in a piece of jewelry or other valuable item. The specific type of spectrometer used to sell gold at Park Avenue Gold Exchange is an XRF Spectrometer that uses X-ray radiation to determine the elemental composition of items it is used to analyze. Some spectrometers measure the mass of molecules to determine elemental composition, but the XRF Spectrometer measures the fluorescence of objects after they’ve been exposed to a small amount of x-ray radiation. Let me explain more…
Fluorescence technology
When people think of fluorescence, most people think of something glowing and they think of fluorescent lights because we see them everywhere around us. Fluorescence doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with light though, it has to do with an element emitting energy after something has been exposed to energy. A fluorescent light bulb contains low pressure mercury vapor along with argon, xenon, neon, or krypton gas. When you expose the gas inside the fluorescent light bulb to energy via electricity, it emits short wave ultraviolet energy which then causes the phosphorous coating on the inside of the light bulb to fluoresce and give off visible light. Visible light is just one very specific type of energy though, and the combinations of gases, metals, and phosphor salts chosen to make fluorescent light bulbs are chosen because they emit interact to produce visible light when excited by electricity. It turns out though, that most if not all elements will emit energy of some type when “excited” by an energy source, even if the type of energy they emit doesn’t happen to be visible to the human eye.
The XRF Spectrometer would not function without this idea that when specific elements are exposed to radiation and absorb energy they fluoresce, meaning they emit back small amounts of energy themselves in a characteristic way that can be measured and used to determine what type of element the measured energy is coming back from. This happens because the X-ray radiation, as I understand it, excites atoms that absorb its energy and slightly destabilizes them, sometimes dislodging electrons from their orbits. Remember high school science class? Just barely? Me too. Anyway, when this happens, the effected atoms attempt to reorganize and re-balance themselves, and that process of reorganizing and re-balancing causes a release of energy that is a little different for every element because of its specific make up.
So, if you expose gold to sufficient x-ray radiation, it doesn’t glow like the components in a fluorescent light bulb, but it will emit back a little energy to you that you can measure with a proper device. If you expose iron to sufficient x-ray radiation, it will also emit back a little energy to you that you can measure, but if you’re a scientist who understands this stuff or a computer that has been programmed to tell the difference, you would see that the energy emitted back by the gold and the energy emitted back by the iron are a little different from one another and can be used to tell us that the iron is iron and the gold is gold.
Putting it all together to sell gold
So, how does this help us accurately measure the value of items when you come to sell gold? The Spectrometer hits your item with an X-Ray beam, which doesn’t harm your item and is completely safe to you because it is on the other side of a protective barrier built into the testing container. The X-ray radiation excites the atoms in your item and causes them to emit fluorescent energy back to our device. The device then interprets the fluorescent energy coming back to it from the interactions of the radiation with individual atoms and molecules in the metal, interprets from which type of element each characteristic energy signal must have come from, and mathematically uses all of the data samples it collects to determine the percentages of each element in the elemental composition of the item being analyzed. Oh, and by the way, this all happens in a matter of seconds. Impressive huh?
Why do we do it? Why should you?
Is it necessary to understand exactly how the Spectrometer works in order to understand why it benefits you when you come to Park Avenue Gold Exchange to sell gold? No, of course not. At Park Avenue Gold Exchange though, we believe in educating our customers and giving the customer the information they need to get the highest possible prices for their valuables. Our investment in this technology is proof of this philosophy. I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief overview of XRF Spectrometer technology and fluorescent energy, and I hope you’ll keep Park Avenue Gold Exchange in mind the next time you want to sell gold.