Process
Gold panning is a simple process. Once a suitable placer deposit is located, some gravel from it is scooped into a pan, where it is then gently agitated in water and the gold sinks to the bottom of the pan. Materials with a low specific gravity are allowed to spill out of the pan, whereas materials with a high specific gravity sink to the bottom of the sediment during agitation and remain within the pan for examination and collection by the gold panner. These dense materials usually consist primarily of a black, magnetite sand with whatever gemstones or metal dust that may be found in the deposit that is used for source material.
Gold panning usually turns up only minor gold dust that is usually collected as a souvenir in small clear tubes. Nuggets and considerable amounts of dust are occasionally found, but panning mining is not generally lucrative. Panning for gold can be used to locate the parent gold veins which are the source of most placer deposits.
Read more about this topic: Gold Panning
Famous quotes containing the word process:
“You can read the best experts on child care. You can listen to those who have been there. You can take a whole childbirth and child-care course without missing a lesson. But you won’t really know a thing about yourselves and each other as parents, or your baby as a child, until you have her in your arms. That’s the moment when the lifelong process of bringing up a child into the fold of the family begins.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“The toddler’s wish to please ... is a powerful aid in helping the child to develop a social awareness and, eventually, a moral conscience. The child’s love for the parent is so strong that it causes him to change his behavior: to refrain from hitting and biting, to share toys with a peer, to become toilet trained. This wish for approval is the parent’s most reliable ally in the process of socializing the child.”
—Alicia F. Lieberman (20th century)
“Interior design is a travesty of the architectural process and a frightening condemnation of the credulity, helplessness and gullibility of the most formidable consumers—the rich.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)