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Hello, I'm Justin Rowlatt. Welcome to Business Daily and the latest in our series looking at the world economy from the chemical elements up.

Today, the most alluring element of them all, gold.

The remarkable thing about gold is its yellow color.

People have puzzled over this for hundreds of years.

And there is surprisingly little of the stuff to go round.

The best guess is a cube about 20 and a half metres square.

It's a bit bigger than a house, but if you plonked it on the top of St Paul's, it will replace the dome.

Another glittering program.

That's Business Daily from the BBC.

Gold presents a bizarre paradox. In chemical terms, it's virtually useless. The metal is almost completely inert. Yet it is one of the most highly valued substances on the planet.

So what makes gold so valuable?

Who better to answer that than Business Daily's favourite chemist, Professor Andrea Seller of

University College London, and where better to discuss it than at the magnificent exhibition

of pre-Columbian gold artefacts at the British Museum?

That necklace is absolutely fantastic.

They almost look like insect thoraxes.

They do.

They have linked to the locusts strung together, golden locusts.

Stunning.

So we come into, it's almost like a cavern.

I mean, this is a wonderfully designed exhibition, isn't it?

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