Facts About Materials Used in Olympic Medals

Every two years, athletes from around the world come together to compete in the Olympics and attempt to win Olympic medals. The host country is responsible for designing and producing the gold, silver and bronze medals. This allows every Olympics to have a different kind of medal, distinguishing it from the others by giving the medal the unique flavor of the host country.

  1. Weight

    • At the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, each medal took 30 steps to produce and ended up weighing 500 grams. To produce all of the medals for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, Canada required 2.05 kilograms of gold, 1,950 kilograms of silver and 903 kilograms of copper.

    Uniqueness

    • Traditionally, the design of the medals for the Summer Games does not change much. On the other hand, the Winter Olympics allow the host country to create its own design. This has resulted in some of the most impressive and creative Olympic Medals--from the color and black arch over top of the gold at Nagano in 1998 to the waves of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic medals.

    Gold Medals

    • Olympic gold medals are not pure gold. Instead, they are made up of 92 percent silver, then plated with six grams of gold. This is because it's too expensive to make Olympic medals out of pure gold, and unless you break the medal in half, you can't tell the difference. In Vancouver, 1.5 percent of each gold medal was made from recycled metals.

    Silver Medals

    • Like the Olympic gold medals, the silver medals are also not made out of pure silver. This is because pure silver is too soft for production. Instead, sterling silver, which is a mixture of 92.5 percent silver and 7.5 percent copper, is used. The silver used in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics was mined from the rocky mountains in British Columbia. As with the gold medals, some silver was recovered through recycled metals and used in the silver medals.

    Bronze Medals

    • In Vancouver, pure bronze wasn't used in the bronze medals as its color is too similar to gold and could lead to confusion over which medal to present to the athlete. Copper was used in its place. The copper is put through a process that will strengthen it to the point where it can be used in medal production. As with both the gold and silver medals, other metal was recycled and used in the bronze medals.