GREY:RNKLF - Post by User
Post by
marben100on Oct 19, 2018 2:01pm
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Post# 28836778
How do they know how much gold is in the specimens?...
How do they know how much gold is in the specimens?......without assaying them?
I gave a little thought to that and realised it's pretty strightforward, when you have high gold percentages.
One of the beauties of gold is its very high density: it has a relative density of 19.3, whereas country rock typically has a relative density pof about 4 and quartz is 2.6. So, if you measure the density of a specimen, you can estimate it's gold content. E.g with 50% gold the overall density would be around 12.
How do you measure the specimen's density? Schoolboy stuff: put it in a bucket of water, measure the weight of water displaced to get the specimen's volume, weigh the dry specimen and simply divide weight by volume - voila!
Apologies in advance if this is obvious to everyone else.
Cheers,
Mark