What Do Real Gold Flakes Look Like

Gold panning whether it s professional or recreational is supposed to yield gold flakes and nuggets washed out of the soil.

What do real gold flakes look like.

However just because it looks like gold and is in the same place as gold doesn t mean that it s gold. Pyrite has a brassy color. Most native gold is alloyed with silver and if the silver content is high enough the specimen will have a whitish yellow color. If the grains are large enuf to see with a good.

If you look at this picture you will see a gold ring next a couple of different kinds of gold naturally occurring in their rock. What does natural raw gold look like in rocks. It can also be crystalline mixed with quartz fine flakes and dust. Gold will look either rounded or sometimes flat.

If you look closely at the piece and see that its structure consists of what looks like small and sharp cubes then it is fool s gold. Placer gold roughly 75 to 95 percent real gold comes in a variety of shapes and sizes from small flakes to large bumpy nuggets. Gold look very different than most other minerals but many people still confuse it. One of the ways to find raw gold begins with panning for it in creeks or rivers fed by eroded gold from mine or natural deposits in rock formations above the water sources.

In this video you will learn about gold bearing rock identification. Real gold weighs about 1 5 times more than fool s gold or iron pyrite. Natural gold looks like gold it looks like jewelry it s a buttery yellow color and it s soft looking. I am using a light source to show the difference between gold which shines and pyrite which sparkles.

Many of these flakes also show some riming or an icy coating. Fool s gold is made up of crystals and has sharp edges while real gold is a metal with a smoother texture and rounder edges. Fool s gold and other minerals that look like gold will not produce a weight difference between the pieces of quartz. Nuggets or small flakes of gold are usually bright and untarnished.

Most people have no idea what to look for and even if they do find gold they might throw it out accidentally. Most specimens of pyrite found in nature will have at least some tarnish on their surface. A new high speed three camera system developed at the university of utah made these pictures as the snowflakes fell. Real gold in nature can come in many different forms not just as gold nuggets.

Pyrite will usually break along crystal faces so it tends to be very blocky looking like tiny dice.