REUTERS/Sergio Moraes
A worker shows an Olympic medal for men's volleyball.
Each Olympic gold medal weighs 500 grams.
The Olympic Committee requires only six of those grams to be gold.
That's only 1.2%.
The precise recipe for gold medals change with each Olympics ceremony, depending on who's making it. Because the 2016 Olympics are in Rio, Casa da Moeda do Brasil, the Brazilian Mint, is making the medals for this year's summer Olympics.
The gold is mostly used for plating. The rest of the medals are mostly made of silver.
Like the Olympic games themselves, the gold medals have their own distinctive history and interesting trivia. Here are 17 things you may not have know, courtesy of Karus Chains.
