Ken Kirkpatrick, age 11, of Peoria, Ill. For his question:

Why is gold so valuable?

The story of gold is woven into the history and prehistory of all mankind. The pharoahs were buried with golden masks, plates and other fine objects of gold. In olden Babylon, tile rich wore golden headdresses. The Celtic Druids wore wide bracelets of gold. In the Americas, goldsmiths wrought helmets and hollow statues for their priests and temples.

Gold has been treasured since the time of our cave dwelling ancestors. Archeologists say that prehistory repeated itself in many places. Each society climbs_ through a Neolithic or New Stone Age, step by step. Its artisans first learned to shape copper, then gold, then bronze. Copper and bronze became everyday metals. But the value of gold endured through more than 6000 years to the present   for very good reasons.

It is colored with the shiny radiance of the sun and all mankind has admired its beauty. It is durable, air cannot tarnish it and water cannot rust it. It is soft enough to be modeled into any shape, drawn into thin threads and hammered into thin sheets. But its world wide value grew and endured for another reason. Gold is hard to find. The early man who had gold had same thing rare and everyone wanted it. Gold became the symbol of wealth and power, owned by kings and chieftains.

Then the neolithics began to travel. Early men of Mesopotamia and Egypt, Crete and Cyprus met and swapped their ideas and treasures. Each society had learned to shape gold and treasured it as the most valuable item of property. It followed that any other item could be swapped for gold. Gold became the metal of trade and this custom continued.

Until 30 years ago, most countries were on the gold standard and banks would give gold for their paper money. Then this system was dropped. Now we keep a store of gold for certain foreign trading and the gov rnment buys all the gold at $35 an ounce.

But the wonderful metal, is still useful and far too handsome to be hidden. It is imp` used to make jewelry and dentists use dabs of gold to fill cavities. Traces of gold are used to tint ruby red glass and gossamer threads are woven into gold lace. Tissue thin sheets of gold leaf are used for the lettering on treasured books.

The wizards of the Middle ages toiled and failed to make gold from cheaper lead. Our atom smashing scientists made gold from platinum, but the platinum was worth more than the gold. There is enough gold dissolved in the oceans to give everyone a solid gold garage. But extracting it costs more than the gold is worth. Men have worked and searched for it, robbed and killed for it   and so far the earth has yielded only perhaps 100,000 tons of gold. The handsome metal is still rare enough to remain valuable.