metal - Why is gold unreactive when only one electron is in the outer shell?

I've been trying to answer my (high school) daughter's questions about the periodic table, and the reactivity series, but we keep hitting gaps in my knowledge.

So I showed that the noble gases have a full outer shell, which is why they don't react with anything. And then over the other side of the periodic table we have potassium and sodium, which have only one electron in their outer shell, which is what makes them so reactive, and at the top of our reactivity list. (And the bigger they get, the more reactive, which is why we were not allowed to play with caesium in class...)

But then we looked up gold, which is at the bottom of the reactivity series, and found it also has only one electron in its outermost shell (2-8-18-32-18-1).

Is there an easy explanation for why gold doesn't fizz like potassium when you drop it in water?

(This question could be rephrased as "What properties of each element decide their ranking in the metal reactivity series?" if you prefer; that was the original question we were trying to answer.)

Answer

First off, gold does react. You can form stable gold alloys and gold compounds. It's just hard, mostly for reasons explained by the other answer

The reason bulk gold solid is largely unreactive is because the electrons in gold fall at energies which few molecules or chemicals match (i.e., due to relativistic effects).

A nice summary of some work by Jens K. Norskov can be found here: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/What+makes+gold+such+a+noble+metal%3F-a017352490

In their experiments, they distinguished between gold atoms' ability to break and form bonds and the ease with which they form new compounds, such as gold oxides. The two qualities are related: To make a compound, gold atoms must bond with other atoms, yet they cannot do so until they have sundered their bonds with neighboring gold atoms.

I think this is a nice succinct explanation. You always have this trade-off in reactions, but in gold, you don't get much energy in the new compound formation, and you're losing the gold-gold interactions.

You can, of course, react gold with aggressive reagents like aqua regia, a 3:1 mix of $\ce{HCl}$ and $\ce{HNO3}$.

If properly done, the product is $\ce{HAuCl4}$ or chloroauric acid.