What is Fool's Gold? 

Prospector: I have found gold Pyrite: *YOU FOOL, YOU'VE FALLEN FOR ONE OF THE MOST CLASSIC BLUNDERS*

0:13 "As a kid, I can sometimes remember looking through dirt." What a life.

"I carefully _shot it with a blowtorch_ " Mmm, such a careful action

Immagine being an alchemist mixing iron and sulfur and shortly thinking to have found the recipe to make gold °-°

4:38 “So instead I bought a bunch of ugly ones from ebay” Wow how rude

So you’re telling me that the perfect cube in the stone was natural? Holy rock

I work underground in a coal mine (Longwall) . Some times when we are cutting through certain parts of the seam you can see this pyrite through the whole face. It’s amazing, especially when you shine your cap lamp (head light) onto it you can really see it in contrast with how dark it is against the black coal face. Absolutely beautiful stuff, the whole coal face will sparkle with it. I have a few pieces of coal at home that are completely lousy with these pyrites. It’s simply amazing, beautiful stuff.

I didn't know that it is called "fools gold" in english. In my language you say "Katzengold" that you could translate with "cat gold". 🐱

Moral of the story: fools gold is cooler than real gold

Yarr I'm a pyrite.. I'm stealing yer golds...

What I found interesting from this video is that Pyrite is a formidable insulator. That torch probably burns at least 2500°F and for the exterior to turn red hot but only transfer the heat about 3mm deep is quite impressive.

" id get really excited thinking I was rich or something only be quickly shut down and told that it was worthless" - Nile . finally I can relate to your videos

"Perfect geometry doesnt exist in the natural world" Pyrite:

“It is about as toxic as cyanide gas, so I wasn’t super anxious to smell it” Well that didn’t age well

awesome video very informative! we have found perfect cubes of this stuff in the abandoned mines we explore. one thing i would like to point out is that the the small shiny pieces in streambeds that people often say is pyrite or fools gold is most likely actually mica. the mineral labeled as pyrite at 3:23 is most likely mica unless the material being panned was just crushed and hasn't been exposed to oxygen but it looks like stream sediment. pyrite tends to rust very easily when exposed to oxygen and even quicker when exposed to water and becomes dull quickly but mica retains its shine forever even as it is broken down in streams to smaller and smaller pieces

waiting a few decades for nilered to lay hands on a particle collider so he can turn fool's gold into gold

"there are no straight lines in nature" pyrite: am i a joke to you?

"I just carefully shot it with a blowtorch"

This video inspired me to start a small collection of pyrite, and one of my prize pieces is one of those perfect cubes. And then I started just straight-up collecting pure elements from the periodic table, so that's been fun.

Pyrite and marcasite play some really interesting roles in the structure of carbon steels. Most of what I know about the two is from my time studying japanese knives as a sushi chef. I never really made the connection that they were fools gold

It's something you learn about at 3am when you should be sleeping

When I was young, my parents had a real fireplace and would buy coal, it was my job to get some from the coal store each few days. I remember taking some lumps of coal to my chemistry teacher, which had fantastic streaks of gold colour in them. He got one of the lab technicians to test them, and sure enough, pyrites. I was quite disappointed.

When I was a kid, in the late sixties, I had a subscription to some science thing for kids. One of the items they sent me was supposed to be a bit of gold ore...but it seems to be pyrite. I've been thinking that it might have both, but it's somewhat pointless to worry about, since whatever box it's in hasn't been opened since we moved more than ten years ago. It's tiny, too.

I've had a stone of this in my bedroom as a little trinket on a shelf for literal years and never thought to look into what it is, now I know! Thanks for the info, now if you don't mind I'm going to buy a bulk order of pyrite crystals myself and make my collection quite a bit larger than it was before

Other kids: playing in the sand on the playground Nile as a kid: digging the dirt on the playground looking for gold.

4:29 I’d rather have one of those on my shelf to look at than a nugget of gold.

10:45 Forbiden freshly gorund black pepper

This is what kind of stuff school should be showing students, along side what we apparently need to learn. Show us a video of this, any further lessons are studying, and at the end of the week, a test based on the video watched. I don't study chemistry at school rn and I don't think I will, but this is amazing!

In Germany we call it "Katzengold" = Cat gold.

My grandparents ranch is close to a massive lake, the beaches glitter in the sun with all fools gold in it.

I liked to make iron (II) sulfide, FeS, when I was young, by mixing proper amounts of sulfur powder and iron powder and heating it, the process of which was shown near the end of this video. That process in itself is very interesting; it looks as if the iron is burning with the oxygen in the air, but it is actually directly uniting with the sulfur, no oxygen is needed for this. Anyway, the even more fun part was of course when you took the resulting FeS and poured some hydrochloric acid on it, and got that reaction which produced hydrogen sulfide, H2S, which smelled like rotten eggs. One day I thought that it would be cool if you mixed powderized FeS with an acid that is in the form of a powder, so that no reaction takes place until you pour water on it. I would then have a stink bomb that I could easily "detonate" at will. The only acid that I could think of was citric acid, which my mother had in the kitchen. So I created that mixture and kept it in a small plastic container with a lid. I brought it to a friend of mine, and we decided to take a small local train into Stockholm. In that train we opened the container, poured some water into it, shook it, and put it into one of the trash cans in our wagon. There were other people in the wagon too. Nothing happened, no smell, and I was disappointed and thought that perhaps citric acid was too weak of an acid. We got off the train in Stockholm (the end station), and spent a few hours there having some fun, and then in the afternoon we went back to the station to catch the train back home. We were a bit late so as soon as we entered the wagon the train started to move. The wagon was totally empty, not a single person, and there was a terrible smell of rotten eggs. We had happened to get into the same wagon as we took earlier that day. Our little experiment had actually worked, although very slowly. Fortunately it was possible to walk from one wagon to another, so we quickly went to the next wagon to escape the horrible smell.

I've always loved Pyrite, since I was a kid. I collected the larger stones, I think it's cooler and prettier than real gold

11:30 Hydrogen sulfide is tricky as well. At toxic levels you can't smell it any more, so if you are in an environment with hydrogen sulfide gas and you can smell it, your safe. When you can't smell it any more, either the gas has cleared, or you are about to die.

I absolutely hated chemistry class in school I was always so bad at it. But your channel is so interesting and I came to really like it. Thanks for making these videos 🤗

There was a loading dock at work with filler stone added for drainage. One sunny day I saw some serious glimmer coming from it and inspected to find that most of the stones were absolutely packed with pyrite. Since then I've been obsessed with collecting some of em. I smash em up, extract the cubic pyrite and have a little vial filled with it now! Fascinating stuff!

i love minerals that make cubes!! it’s always so amazing to see!

Running in forest barefooted and stepping on that would be critical

My dad is a Geologist, so we have this stuff around the house. I think it looks awesome. (Edit) I'm now in college working toward a major in Geology.

I have a small sample of pyrite, absolutely love looking at it. Has some amazing flashes. A lot of gem collectors don't treat it correctly though and wonder why their sample cracks or flakes

One of my favorite rocks I own is a hunk of quartz and iron with the brittle type of pyrite spread over many of the surfaces. It's a beautiful mix of colors.

Pyrite: exists Some merchant: *Aight.... Time to crash the stock market.*

I've always loved pyrite, even as a kid when I was told it was "fool's gold" I didn't have the reaction of "oh well then it's worthless" because it still looked really cool.

Thanks for the upload. It was very useful/informative.

I love when the chunk exploded in the pan, so the torch backed off, then it cut to a close up of the largest chunk and the torch slide back into frame with a smaller flame. It’s just hilarious to me

Wow that perfectly formed cube on the rock looked beautiful

15:12 you good?

7:31 This totally looks like your ordinary red rocks that you see lying on the ground.

To try and explain the fracturing of the pyrite sample... When you heat up a mineral the sudden heating can cause deformation or dilation in the crystallography of the mass, and when a large enough temperature gradient exists in the sample, like in very insulative minerals like pyrite, or if the crystallography is just very weak, it causes internal stress to build up inside the sample, as the heated, and thus, dilated crystals separate from the lower temperature, normally sized crystals, or the rapid contraction or dilation just breaks the structure uniformly. This is also why ceramics and glasses crack if you heat them too much. If it gets hot enough, then yes, in some minerals, the crystallography "completely" breaks down, whether it be due to chemical processes, or just physical stress put on the crystallography, resulting in a slew of miniature crystals, usually resembling a powder, seen in the porous iron oxide layer. Tell me If I got something wrong, more educated folk. Thanks

>Cheap >100 dollars Choose one

Me : Thought it was gold Fool gold : YOU FOOL, You thought i was gold but no, IT WAS ME DI-

Seen large chunks of this underground when i was working in a gold mine, very cool looking material and very difficult to tell apart from gold unless there is some gold nearby

so amazing! thank you for explaing it to me! ☺️🍀

The fact that it naturally forms nearly perfect cubes and is a semiconductor is already incredably cool and makes it better than gold to me

15:12 Are you okay? We can talk if you want

2:47 this is why back in the old days you test gold coins by biting them to see if they would bend or they would break

6:55 I'd imagine FeS also has a different structure to FeS2, the most chnge being (slighlty) different bond lengths. Even a tiny change in that length would cause a *huge* pressure in an incompressible material, causing it to just push itself apart. In any case, it has to completely reorganise on the molecular level, so it's not surprising that it breaks at any rate.

When I was a kid, I found a large chunk of this, and I thought it was glowstone from Minecraft.

Hey, here's a fun fact: pyrite can be incorporated into fossils, making "golden" ammonites etc. Check it out

I'm from a village that has a pyrit mine, which was closed 1992. But there is still a museum which shows the 140 years of work and im a tourguide there. The pyrit which was found there was Not always so cube like, but for me its interesting to learn more about it, to tell the people who visit the museum. And we also show cube like pyrit and explain the cause of its shape ;)

May I add an idea of how to differentiation small flakes of pyrite from similar-sized bits of gold when in the field? My experience as a geologist of many decades has taught me this. Use a strong magnifying eyepiece or similar; a magnifier such that you can easily see the grains. Take something very pointed like a pin, and push on the grain. Under the magnification you will observe pyrite yo crack or crumble, whilst gold will smoothly deform. The difference is very marked.

I just clicked this video instead of the Blender tutorial I was going to use... I’m not disappointed

Someone gave me a pyrite cube as a child and it inspired my interest in material science and engineering, I still have that very cube in my collection. cool video on an underrated mineral

Grandpa had some pyrite on his shelf, I always liked the gold colour. Not cubic, but still very cool to look at. Kinda sad it got lost; most likely thrown out before renovations, after grandma passed a few years back. Grandpa had some other cool rocks as well. Now I'm determined to continue the legacy with a cool rock collection myself :D

I already have learned more on chemistry from your channel and others, like Cody'sLab, than after 3 years of school

As a Geology student, I can give you the simplest explanation for the different shapes of Pyrite and Gold. You can find Gold in nature as "native": the composition of it is purely Au (charged 0, so elemental form, as found on periodic table); pyrite is a sulfide salt instead (FeS2), so it crystallize, as every other salt, in geometric shapes 😊 in this case, pyrite forms cubes when pressure, concentrations of components and temperature are consistent, and other geometrical shapes when a change in its original contitions happens 😊 Hope to have written everything correctly, I come from Italy so English here is very hard to practice 🙈

"in nature everything is irregular there are no perfect shapes" pyrite: haha cube go brrrr

I used to dig through my driveway gravel for fossils when I was a kid. Now I work at a quarry and pyrite is everywhere here if you know which rocks and layers to look. I love it.

Can you do more on crystals and minerals please!? This is really cool.

15:00 Pyrite: My goals Hammer: My destructive habits

1:10 Most pyrite cubes are natural, but glued to a rock artificially to improve value.

Much love from Rochester Minnesota.

You did a good video o this mineral, you should do more on different minerals, and you only tipped the iceberg with pyrite, as there are many different varieties of pyrite, even arseno-pyrite that contains arsenic, chalcopyrite with multi colors from iridescence, pyrrhotite, and others.

My parents talking about me: " There should be a reaction about now but I think its just really slow"

You might not believe, I was about to go to bed(it's 3:48AM in Japan) but I found your latest video so I will stay up little more late to say this. "ようこそNileRed! 日本を楽しんで！"

1:08 I was told at a young age that "right angles don't exist in nature"... Meanwhile here's a cube 😂

This dude has cured my boredom his videos are interesting and entertaining

"As a kid I can sometimes remember looking through dirt" hell yeah bro you got it that's how to live life right there

The mini explosions is more likely due to different thermal expansion rate between FeS2 and FeS.

that perfect cube is just about the best thing i have seen on you tubby in a while. Is it possible to cause Iron Pyrite to make that shape through initiating some kind of reaction?

Don't forget chalcopyrite (CuFeS2 )is relatively common as well, and with its more yellowish colour (due to the added copper) it is very often mistaken for gold as well. I would suggest the pyrite pieces in the pan along with the gold is in fact chalcopyrite.

2:47 Nooooooo. You've crushed my dreams... Idk I have a thing for pyrite. I could have a ton of it and still If I found a beautiful peice I would have taken it anyways.

"Careful" "Blowtorch" One of these things is not like the other

Pyrite is one of my favourite minerals, and yeah, here in Spain it's always sold in cube form, even when it has impurities.

The amazing thing is that. Chemistry RU-vid video garnered 3 million views. Testament to Niles attention to detail and calm way of explaining complex concepts

Please make a video on mineral "Quartz". .. Its the most abundant mineral and forms beautiful crystal ...it also offers PIEZOELECTRICITY...

"Semiconductor materials are used pretty extensively in the electronics industry" Haha understatement of the century 😂

That layered thing looks really cool, you should keep it.

I will never be able to get over just how perfect and large the cubes are that pyrite is capable of forming.

My suggestion for the next mineral video: Corundum. It has plenty of uses for tool blades, forms beautiful crystals like Sapphire, and it flouresces in UV light.

this channel is great i learn more from a single video than what i would learn in a year at school

Pyrite from the Glendon Pyrophyllite mine in North Carolina ALSO form perfect cubes. I know because I have mined several from that mine, they had (I dont know if they still do this) open house days at the quarry/mine pit and you could pay to go in and mine the accessory minerals to the pyrophyllite. (mainly huge pyrite cubes and twins, the occasional ultra-rare blue/green fluorite, and some trace iron ore minerals (hematite, magnetite, ilmenite , etc...) I have one cube from this location that is larger than my fist and damn near perfectly cubic. It's incredible how heavy it is. The twins that form here are amazing too, there will be two perfectly formed cubes joined at the most aesthetically pleasing angles. Pyrite is a fun mineral to hunt. I also know a much more accessible place to find smaller cubes on highway 321 out of blowing rock NC. I used to head down to NC all the time to collect minerals, a great state for rockhounds. Sadly, I don't get down that way very often anymore.

I have a pyrite collection, I've loved it since I was seven and I still love it so much it makes me happy :) it's so pretty

It's not generally found in native form, but bismuth is interesting. Beautiful crystals, loads of interesting properties. Least radioactive of the radioactive elements, (longer half life than the universe) dimagnetic, etc.

Piryte was actually used a lot to make radio frequency diodes, used in foxhole radios or also called "crystal radios", germanium and galena were also used. you should try that lol. It would be a great exploration of a "different realm".

My grandpa was a geologist for some big mining and drilling companies. At a job in Spain he got a hold of a cube over a foot on each edge. I remember using it as a stool as a toddler.

Love the perfect cube versions

fun fact: fools gold is called katinkulta, or cats gold in finland!

3:08 big chungus

I recently received a cube of what I think is this stuff from a friend, now I actually know what it is. Thanks.