Silver provides a fascinating study because it has been used as money for thousands of years. Inflation has made the metal too valuable to be used as literal coinage nowadays but in ancient Rome for a day’s work a well-paid laborer could earn a denarius, a silver coin weighing approximately three grams. And the wages of a laborer stayed more or less unchanged until the advent of the Industrial Revolution. By the early 1800s an unskilled laborer would have earned three times as much as a Roman if his earnings were to be paid in silver. Today, a US worker earning the minimum wage could pull in almost 80 grams of the metal per 8-hour shift, a nearly thirty-fold increase since ancient times. However, it’s easy to draw the wrong conclusions from this observation. The fact is that neither the price of silver nor the value of a laborer’s output has remained constant. After all, an ancient silver miner toiling away with crude tools was likely hundreds of times less productive than his modern counterpart employing heavy machinery.

As for the metal itself, silver is the element with the highest level of reflectivity. 95% of the light reaching a mirrored silver surface bounces back. Aluminum is the next most reflective at only 90% so silver wins handily. Not surprisingly, it is the metal of choice with which to make mirrors. However, silver is a delicate metal. On top of being soft it is reactive with sulfur traces of which are suspended in air. Thus, over time silver dulls and its surface will become completely black unless polished or treated with chemicals.

Just as a mirror’s silver coat is protected with an impermeable pane of glass, in this argon-filled ampule the ultrapure silver beads will remain blindlingly shiny; making for a great presentation of this storied metal.