Hi, Just thought I show the contents of a small amount of concentrates I panned from Western North Carolina and ask a few questions. I promise to use a black bowl next time; as it has better contrast.
- Pesky flakes of Gold
Notice a few "pickers" of gold. There is apparently a lot of "flour" gold too.
- Stuff other than gold
Now this is the stuff that wants to be in the pan with gold. An experienced "panner" can wash this out easily. Now when I was up at Doug's the other day, I wondered if this was radioactive. We placed a small amount of it on the Geo pancake detector and got a count about 450cpm above background. So I theorize that this contains a lot of Monazite or maybe even Uranium. We don't have a good gamma spectrometer, so we don't know right now. Now these pictures were taken after I pulled out the magnetite with a magnet. (I could not detect anything much over background in the magnetite). With the high price, or more likely, the unavailability of rare earth minerals, I wonder if the monazite can be mined economically today from the creek sands. This table is not correct in that it lists some pure metals and I don't know at this moment which oxides or sulfates etc. the metals actually exist in nature. Also I need to get in touch with USGS or the North Carolina equivalent to find out what is actually in there. Of course with the fusor and a good gamma spec, we would know for sure.
Here is a link to the rare earth etc. in Monazite.
Attached are two tables of relative densities of stuff that is or maybe is in the creek sand I panned.
Sorted by low Sorted by high
Sp/gr Sp/gr
Element/compound Element/compound
low high low high
mica 1.6 2.88 sio2 2.65 2.65
sio2 2.65 2.65 quartz 2.65 2.65
quartz 2.65 2.65 mica 1.6 2.88
garnet 3 4.25 garnet 3 4.25
monazite 4.6 5.7 pyrite 5.1 5.1
pyrite 5.1 5.1 magnetite 5.17 5.18
magnetite 5.17 5.18 monazite 4.6 5.7
zirconium 6.5 6.5 zirconium 6.5 6.5
silver 10.5 10.5 silver 10.5 10.5
thorium 11.72 11.72 thorium 11.72 11.72
uranium 18.95 18.95 uranium 18.95 18.95
gold 19.28 19.28 gold 9.28 19.28
platinum 21.4 21.4 platinum 21.4 21.4
(sorry about the table spacing. I formatted it several times and it still looks like this; should I use the Quote function?)
Maybe the Sio2/Quartz is as pure as it is at Spruce Pine,NC (source of all the world's silicon for electronic chips). -bill