The eight a lot of gold, silver and copper unearthed from mines in Mongolia and Utah and currently underneath guard at the Tower of London is that the largest ever haul used to form Olympic medals.
Olympics 2012 | Schedule | India at Olympics | Medals Tally
"The medals found out the tower on July a pair of, and that we can keep them underneath tight security" Tracey Sands, spokeswoman for Historic Royal Palaces, said.
The 4,700 Olympic and Paralympic medals are guarded alongside Britain's crown jewels till they're presented on stage.
"For centuries the Tower of London has protected a number of this country's greatest treasures therefore there are often no higher sanctuary for the 2012 medals - the foremost precious possession any athlete may hope to possess," said London Mayor Boris Johnson.
The winners' medals are actually precious, despite the fact that gold solely makes up a little portion of their alloy.
A gold medal weighing regarding 410 grams contains solely six grams of gold - one.34 p.c of its weight - the rest being silver compound (92.5 percent) and copper.
However, the recent gold and silver booms that have seen costs double since the 2008 Games in Beijing make sure that the medals are the foremost expensive in Olympic history.
Added to the present, the scale of the London medals (85 millimetres in diameter and 7 millimetres thick) create them the heaviest ever struck for the Summer Olympics.
In Beijing, the medals were around 0.5 as significant at two hundred grams.
But the London medals stay below the record set by the Winter Games in Vancouver in 2010, where the medals weighed up to 576 grams.
British artist David Watkins designed the medals, that depict Nike, the Greek goddess of victory.
The reverse bears the London Games brand in front of a radiating star motif, representing the spirit and tradition of the Olympics, and therefore the River Thames, for town of London.
"If there is the slightest blemish, we have a tendency to reject them," said Fergus Feeney, programme director at the one,000-year-old Royal Mint, that produces Britain's currency and created the Olympic medals.
The coveted discs were every processed fifteen times in a very huge hydraulic press called the Colossus.
The gold, silver and copper was extracted by Anglo-Australian world mining large Rio Tinto from its Oyu Tolgoi plant in Mongolia and therefore the Kennecott mine in Utah within the u. s..
The choice was controversial as its extraction techniques in Utah are thought-about by some to be polluting.
"Rio Tinto isn't Olympic calibre in its behaviour toward its own staff and their families," said Ken Neumann, national director in Canada of the United Steelworkers trade union.
At least the winning athletes are often assured the medals are higher than those issued the last time London hosted the Olympics in 1948.
Then, post-war austerity meant that the medals were of poor quality and required regular regilding.
Olympics 2012 | Schedule | India at Olympics | Medals Tally
"The medals found out the tower on July a pair of, and that we can keep them underneath tight security" Tracey Sands, spokeswoman for Historic Royal Palaces, said.
The 4,700 Olympic and Paralympic medals are guarded alongside Britain's crown jewels till they're presented on stage.
"For centuries the Tower of London has protected a number of this country's greatest treasures therefore there are often no higher sanctuary for the 2012 medals - the foremost precious possession any athlete may hope to possess," said London Mayor Boris Johnson.
The winners' medals are actually precious, despite the fact that gold solely makes up a little portion of their alloy.
A gold medal weighing regarding 410 grams contains solely six grams of gold - one.34 p.c of its weight - the rest being silver compound (92.5 percent) and copper.
However, the recent gold and silver booms that have seen costs double since the 2008 Games in Beijing make sure that the medals are the foremost expensive in Olympic history.
Added to the present, the scale of the London medals (85 millimetres in diameter and 7 millimetres thick) create them the heaviest ever struck for the Summer Olympics.
In Beijing, the medals were around 0.5 as significant at two hundred grams.
But the London medals stay below the record set by the Winter Games in Vancouver in 2010, where the medals weighed up to 576 grams.
British artist David Watkins designed the medals, that depict Nike, the Greek goddess of victory.
The reverse bears the London Games brand in front of a radiating star motif, representing the spirit and tradition of the Olympics, and therefore the River Thames, for town of London.
"If there is the slightest blemish, we have a tendency to reject them," said Fergus Feeney, programme director at the one,000-year-old Royal Mint, that produces Britain's currency and created the Olympic medals.
The coveted discs were every processed fifteen times in a very huge hydraulic press called the Colossus.
The gold, silver and copper was extracted by Anglo-Australian world mining large Rio Tinto from its Oyu Tolgoi plant in Mongolia and therefore the Kennecott mine in Utah within the u. s..
The choice was controversial as its extraction techniques in Utah are thought-about by some to be polluting.
"Rio Tinto isn't Olympic calibre in its behaviour toward its own staff and their families," said Ken Neumann, national director in Canada of the United Steelworkers trade union.
At least the winning athletes are often assured the medals are higher than those issued the last time London hosted the Olympics in 1948.
Then, post-war austerity meant that the medals were of poor quality and required regular regilding.
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