5 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Silver

Silver is a very interesting metal and although everyone is familiar with its use in the production of fine jewelry and tableware, it has a wide variety of other uses due to its unique set of characteristics. It is the best metal for conducting electrical currents, as well as conducting heat and it is easy to work with, making it perfect for a number of unique uses including the following ones.

1.       You can find small amounts of it in virtually every car on the planet

Since it is incredibly efficient at conducting electrical currents, silver is often used in electrical wiring, particularly in cars. All the contacts are coated in silver to allow optimal conductivity. In addition to this, heated rear windows use silver as a highly efficient means of conducting enough heat to allow you to melt away frost in the winter.

2.       Silver can be used to cause rain or snow

An interesting little tidbit is that we have had the technology to affect the weather to a small degree for decades now. A chemical compound called silver iodide is loaded up on a plane, taken high into the air and dispersed into a cloud, causing rainfall. This process is called cloud seeding and works on a fairly simple principle – the particles help condense the water vapor in the clouds, causing it to become liquid and rain down. The silver iodine crystals and ice have a similar structure so, releasing them into a cloud at the right temperature range can cause snowfall.

3.       Silver paste is used in solar panels

Although we are not making huge leaps in technology as people from past decades have predicted, we are slowly moving to more sustainable energy sources that are both clean and relatively inexpensive. Solar panels are a fairly efficient way of producing electrical power – the technology still needs some improvement – and a key component used in their creation is silver paste, and once the technology starts seeing wider use, the demand for silver will increase substantially.

4.       Silver is used for producing fine images on film

Old school photography methods are slowly veining and being replaced by digital technology, but there are still some aesthetic and nostalgic components to the older methods which use silver crystal in the process of creating the image. A little silver goes a long way, and you can create thousands of photos from as little as an ounce of silver.

5.       Silver coins and bullion are still considered a great investment opportunity

Since ancient times, silver has been a favorite material for use in coins and other forms of currency in countries from around the world. Even today, it is still regarded as a highly precious metal and buying silver bullion is considered a good investment opportunity. In times of economic uncertainty, when paper currencies tend to lose their value quickly, silver bullion, alongside gold, has historically been used to preserve people’s wealth. Due to the somewhat volatile nature of silver prices during a period of several weeks or months, buying silver bullion and selling it at the right moment has been used as an investment strategy by short-term investors.

There are plenty of uses for silver and its demand doesn’t seem to show signs of veining, even after thousands of years that it has been used by mankind. It is an important industrial material and precious commodity all at once.