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Gold Prospecting
What is gold prospecting? Gold prospecting, which is sometimes also referred to as placer mining is the activity of going with equipment to find gold in rocks or in stream beds with a view to exploiting that discovery. Gold prospecting or placer mining refers to the mining of alluvial deposits for minerals. Alluvium is soil or sediments deposited by a river or other running water. This may be done by open-pit or open-cast mining or by various forms of tunneling into ancient riverbeds. Excavation may be preformed using water pressure surface excavating equipment or tunneling equipment. Up until the quite recently in fact even in the last century, gold prospecting was undertaken with the intent of securing an area to be worked entirely with the intention of developing substantial paying quantities of the metal. The term gold prospecting in the last half of the last century and into this century has been more commonly used to describe recreational gold hunting as pursued by individuals, especially in streams and usually on the basis of no given authority. The simplest technique to extract gold from placer ore is panning. In panning, some mined ore is placed in a large metal pan, combined with a generous amount of water, and agitated so that the gold particles, being of higher density than the other material, settle to the bottom of the pan. The lighter ore material such as sand, mud and gravel are then washed over the side of the pan, leaving the gold behind. Gold prospecting means finding and working these placer deposits. Once a placer deposit is located by gold panning, the miner usually shifts to equipment that can treat volumes of sand and gravel more quickly and efficiently. The best and fastest way to find good placer deposits is by studying the local alluvium in the rivers and streams. Alluvium is typically made up of a variety of materials, including fine particles of silt and clay and larger particles of sand and gravel. A river is continually picking up and dropping solid particles of rock and soil from its bed throughout its length. Where the river flow is fast, more particles are picked up than dropped. Where the river flow is slow, more particles are dropped than picked up. Areas where more particles are dropped are called alluvial or flood plains, and the dropped particles are called alluvium. Alluvium often contain valuable ores such as gold and platinum and a wide variety of gemstones. Such concentrations of valuable ores is termed a placer deposit. And people that work them are prospecting gold.
