What are the Olympic Medals made of? Are they solid gold?

Question

What are the Olympic Medals made of? Are they solid gold?

Answer 1

Gold = Mostly silver coated with gold plating

Silver = Mostly silver

Bronze = Mostly Bronze



This year, each of the medals have a different colored jade ring in the center.

Answer 2

Each Olympic medal must be at least 70mm across and 6mm thick. The gold and silver medals must contain at least 92.5% silver, and at least 6 grams of 24-carat gold must coat each gold medal. Bronze medals contain copper, zinc, tin and a very small amount of silver.



For the Beijing Olympics the gold came from the BHP Billiton owned Cannington mine site in North West Queensland, Australia, they also provided the silver used for the production of the gold and silver medals. BHP Billiton mine sites in Chile provided the copper for producing the bronze medals.



302 gold medals were made for the Beijing Olympics.

See official website:

http://beijing2008.bhpbilliton.com/news/

Answer 3

For the Beijing Olympics, they were made of solid silver with a gold plating and an inset ring of jade.

Answer 4

The medals are indeed just gold plated. The gold used is mined in the host nation. Read this article.



http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=philbrick/080820

Answer 5

If it was solid gold that would cost tons of money to get them. Its just gold plating.

Answer 6

plated gold, can you imagine what a solid gold medal of that size would cost.........holy cow. Can you say security.

Answer 7

just the front and back are gold not the inside

Answer 8

outside-gold

inside-creamy nougat