![]() ![]() I mean, if you drop a small rock and a large rock, they are going to fall with essentially the same motion. We often like to think that big things (like large rocks) will behave just like small things (like pebbles). ![]() This is a great example of the physics of scale. Still, that should be OK, because with a bigger object, a gold sniper should be able to clearly see the difference between something that's gold and something that's not. But as the rocks and gold pieces get bigger, the downstream separation is quite small. That's exactly what you want: Get the rock out of there, leave the gold. If the two pieces each have a radius of just 0.2 millimeters (that's pretty tiny), they will end up about 5 centimeters apart after sinking in the water. The smaller the stuff, the greater the downstream separation between rocks and gold. There's something else to see from this plot. The gold pieces would sink to the bottom first. These other materials would have similar-shaped curves, but they would be in between the ones for gold and rock. Sometimes you can find tiny pieces of iron (with a density of 7.87 grams per cubic centimeter) or even lead (11.34 g/cm 3). There can be other materials mixed in with river debris, too. You know what this means? I have to build a model of debris and gold pieces in a moving river. Profit! (Or, at least enjoy some entertainment.)īut why doesn’t the gold get washed away along with the flowing water? It seems strange to me, but I suspect it has to do with the very high density of gold, around 19.3 grams per cubic centimeter- much higher than rock, which is about 2.7 grams per cubic centimeter. Use a little squeeze bottle and suck up those tiny pieces. Most of the debris will get swept away in the river current, but the gold will start to sink. Swish the water around with your hand to stir up debris, which will include a lot of small rocks and dirt, but maybe also some gold. Dig around in the rocks looking for the places most likely to harbor the flecks. Here's how it works, according to my extensive analysis of YouTube: Find a river that could have gold in it. One way to look for these flecks of gold is to use the “sniping” method. (But be careful or YouTube will just give you more gold videos.) If you want to check them out, take a look at Tassie Boys Prospecting or Pioneer Pauly. There are a bunch of prospecting videos, but I like the ones where people wade knee-deep into rivers and search for tiny bits of gold stuck in the cracks of rocks. I'm not exactly sure how the YouTube algorithm finds videos for me to watch, but now that I've stumbled into videos about people searching for gold, I can't stop. ![]()
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