![]() The original placer miners used gold pans, sluice boxes and rockers. Because gold is dense, when a slurry containing gold, rocks, and water is swirled in a pan, the other materials wash away, leaving behind the gold. Sorting placer gold from the worthless sand and gravel is easily accomplished with techniques such as panning. Often, down-stream from a good bedrock source there will be a significant accumulation of placer gold. What this means is that gold can be eroded from its original bed-rock source, and transported for miles without undergoing chemical changes. Placer mining takes advantage of the fact that gold is both inert, and dense/heavy. The basic concept of retrieving gold via placer mining has not changed since the early gold rushes. Typically, when you think of gold mining, an underground or open-pit hard rock mining operation comes to mind, however historically, prospectors looked for placer gold deposits in rivers and stream-beds, and used simple techniques, such as gold panning as exploration tools. ![]() The heightened competition to locate deposits has explorers getting creative on where and how they conduct their search. With gold repeatedly testing record-highs, there is an increased incentive for explorers to locate new reserves of the precious metal. This article was originally published on Gold Investing News on June 20, 2011.
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