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A friend of mine who was into alchemy, told me it was because the difference was only three protons. I don't if early alchemists knew that or why not consider metals that are less than three protons different from gold.

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Those would iridium, platinum, mercury, and thalium. For varying definitions of "early", these alchemists only knew about mercury and maybe platinum (there was platinum in Egyptian gold, but it isn't clear they knew it was in there or thought of it as anything more than an impurity). Mercury they did try to turn to gold. They thought of it as an ur-metal from which all other metals came.

But as the sibling poster states, no, they didn't know.

I think that Gold/Platinum alloy is one of the plot points of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and it's in relation to Newton's alchemical experiments.

no, alchemists didn't know about protons

Yes they were closer to thinking that everything was fundamentally made from earth, wind, fire, and water.

Electrons=Water

Photons=Wind

Neutrons=Earth

Protons=Fire

Clearly gold is just lead with a little bit of extra elemental fire, I mean, look at the colors.

They did know about density, though, which is closely linked.

How so?

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