A ring is any circular band, typically of precious metal, worn for aesthetic or decorative purposes. The word “ring” on its own usually refers to jewellery worn on only the index finger; however, when worn on another body part, the word is defined within the term, such as earrings, finger rings, wrist rings, belly rings and tongue rings. Most men and women generally wear a matching ring or group of rings on each of their fingers, though some men and women also choose to wear a matching bracelet. Wearing multiple rings on different fingers has been in trend since the Middle Ages and Renaissance, when wealthy individuals would often wear several rings on various fingers so that they would be more aesthetically appealing. Today, rings are commonly worn on any finger – even though most people usually wear only one.
As with rings, there are several types of rings and some of them are discussed below. First there is the main article or main ring system. This is the most common type of ring used and comes in two parts: the band or main body and the side bands or accents. The main article is normally thinner than the other rings and the side bands tend to be thicker, depending on what is being worn.
The second type of ring system is known as the roche limit. This type of ring system allows for a specific number of metals to be combined together to create a limited ring of a certain shape. The first four metals commonly seen in the roche limit are garnet (red), citrine (green), amethyst (yellow) and ruby (blue). Amethyst and ruby are found together as a pair, while garnet are found together as a single stone called Topaz. Each metal in the roche limit is matched to another metal in the ring system. The rings created by this method are normally wider at the center than they are at the edges, giving them an appearance more like the spokes of a wheel than the standard rings.
Next we look at the rarer metals that make up the rings of the roche limit. The rarer metals that can be combined are the gold rings and platinum rings that only contain one pure metal. The rarer that these rings are, the higher the value of the ring will be because of the scarcity of the metal used to make the ring. For example, an Iron ring may be worth more money than an Iron ring that contains Platinum. Rare metals like this are very valuable, but are hard to find.
Rings made from giant planets are also common. Giant planets include Saturn, Uranus, Pluto and Neptune. There are rings made from these planets in astronomy classifications ranging from “space rock” to “gas giant” in the outer solar system. If you look deep into space, you can sometimes find a giant planet ring system.
In addition to the rings made by planets, they can be made from moons of the planets or the moons of other heavenly bodies. moons can circle around other heavenly bodies and get closer to their parent planet until such time as they become extremely hot and molten, crashing into the parent planet. The rings created from this kind of collision are similar to the planetoid rings, only they occur in the outer solar system. Some people believe that the composition of the moon shows evidence of past life. Evidence for this is evidence of water taken out of the moons by the planetoids, and there are also many planets in our solar system with potentially habitable moons.