More Than Jewelry: 7 Strange Uses for Silver You Never Knew About

The jewelry you wear is a personal statement of your style. Some jewelry pieces can also be sentimental or remind you of family or loved ones. 

There are plenty of weird things to know about jewelry. Today we’ll take a look at some interesting uses for silver — other than using it for jewelry. 

Whether you prefer silver vs. gold for your personal tastes, we think you’ll enjoy these seven strange uses for silver. 

1. Fill Your Cavities

It’s true that your mouth could be worth a lot more if you have cavities. 

Dentists commonly use silver to create dental fillings. Silver is one of the components of the dental amalgam molded into the holes in your teeth left by cavities. 

The amalgam mixture is a strong combination of several elements: liquid mercury with a powdered alloy composed of copper, tin, and silver.

The value of the amount of silver in your mouth isn’t worth much. However, you can check the silver spot price to help you decide if your fillings could earn you some money. 

If you decide not to sell your fillings, we’re confident that the improvement in the health of your mouth after filling your cavities is priceless. 

2. Disinfect Many Surfaces

Cleaning with silver isn’t just for rich people. The average everyday person can also clean with silver if you know where to get it. 

You can use silver as a broad spectrum cleaner. It’s most commonly used as a product called Nanosil.

Approved by the EPA, Nanosil is a hospital and medical environment disinfectant. It’s also used on poultry and dairy farms for commercial cleaning.

The product uses nano-sized silver ions without the use of toxic chemicals. Because it’s a broad spectrum cleaner, it kills a variety of bacteria on multiple surfaces. And it’s safe for use around hospital patients and livestock. 

3. Treat Your Warts

Warts and corns don’t stand a chance against silver. 

You’ll find this treatment in the form of a caustic pencil available at most drug stores. The pencils contain a mixture of silver nitrate with potassium nitrate. 

Be sure you handle a caustic pencil with care. The mixture is a corrosive substance intended to “burn” off your wart or corn. Apply it only to the affected area. 

The chemicals cauterize the damaged skin caused by the wart or corn. 

It’s not silver’s most glamorous use. But it is effective. 

4. Coat Your Windshield

Your car’s windshield just might have a little bit of bling with a coat of silver. 

Automobile manufacturers found that windshields with a thin coat of protective silver reject more of the solar heat than windshields without a silver coating. 

This works by using two layers of silver between layers of antireflective dielectric metal oxide. The finished windshield helps reflect more heat while adding strength. 

Your back windshield defroster is also made of silver. It’s one of nature’s best thermal conductors. That’s why manufacturers use silver in those lines you see across the back windshield. 

But don’t try to mine your windshield for silver. The silver layers are too thin to be worth the effort. 

5. Change the Weather

A new piece of silver jewelry can change your mood. Dispersing silver iodide in the air can help change the weather. 

Scientists call this practice “cloud seeding.”

It’s used by the agriculture industry to encourage rainfall and improve crops. Airplanes disperse silver iodide into the atmosphere to react with clouds. 

Cloud seeding was also used in the 1960s in an effort to affect hurricane behavior. Scientists hoped silver iodide would help a hurricane lose power faster and prevent major hurricanes from happening. 

But don’t go tossing your silver jewelry in the air the next time you need some rain. 

There are questions about the effectiveness of silver iodide in changing the weather. Hurricane behavior was not proven to change much with or without cloud seeding with silver iodide. 

6. Make a Leg

Pirates no longer need to settle for a wooden peg leg. Medical manufacturer’s use silver to make today’s prosthetics and implants. 

Silver’s antimicrobial properties make it the perfect coating for medical implants. Many surgically implanted knee joints, tibia, femurs, or hip joints use the silver coating to prevent infection.

Silver’s antibacterial powers happen after ionization. It’s then perfect for use in the human body. 

With less opportunity for infection, your implant has a better chance of success without repeat surgery. 

If you need an arm or a leg, chances are your prosthetic contains some amount of silver. 

Again, the antimicrobial trait of silver makes it the perfect mineral to incorporate into the materials used for prosthetics. Silver coating helps add protection.

Many prosthesis wearers used silver-infused liners inside the prosthetic to help fight bacteria while wearing prosthetics. 

7. Purify Your Water

If it’s good enough for astronauts, it must be legit. 

Instead of using chlorine on board the Apollo spacecraft, NASA released silver ions into the water to destroy bacteria. That bacteria was later filtered out to create pure drinking water for the astronauts.

Silver ions help kill bacteria including staph, strep, E. Coli, and salmonella. It proved so effective for NASA that hospitals have tested using silver ions to purify tap water. It’s used as another measure to prevent Legionnaire’s disease.

In third world countries with poor water purification capabilities, scientists are testing using colloidal silver as an additional measure for treating water.

The silver isn’t added directly to the water supply. It’s instead used to treat ceramic water filters for an additional layer of purification. 

There Are Many Unique Uses for Silver

Silver is more than bling. With so many unique and crazy uses for silver, it’s such a fun element. 

From its amazing disinfecting and antibacterial properties to its ability to add strength as a coating and help you get rid of warts, silver certainly doesn’t fail to impress. 

If silver is so amazing, what about gold? If you’re curious about some of gold’s crazy capabilities, check out our article about the top ten crazy, pure-gold facts about gold. 

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