What Does Real Gold Flakes Look Like

What does natural raw gold look like in rocks.

What does real gold flakes look like.

Gold has a golden to yellow color. It can also be crystalline mixed with quartz fine flakes and dust. Gold will look either rounded or sometimes flat. Fool s gold scratches glass whereas real gold does not.

However just because it looks like gold and is in the same place as gold doesn t mean that it s gold. Pyrite will usually break along crystal faces so it tends to be very blocky looking like tiny dice. Nuggets or small flakes of gold are usually bright and untarnished. Most native gold is alloyed with silver and if the silver content is high enough the specimen will have a whitish yellow color.

Gold look very different than most other minerals but many people still confuse it. Gold shines at any angle not just when the light is right. Pyrite has a brassy color. Most specimens of pyrite found in nature will have at least some tarnish on their surface.

Real gold weighs about 1 5 times more than fool s gold or iron pyrite. The edges will look sharp and it may separate in layers. Iron pyrite is attracted to magnets but real gold is not magnetic. Get a piece of copper and try to scratch the copper with the gold.

In this video you will learn about gold bearing rock identification. I am using a light source to show the difference between gold which shines and pyrite which sparkles. Fool s gold can be mistaken for placer gold gold found as rounded or flat nuggets in dry and wet stream beds and rivers or creeks because they both look golden. You will distinctly see the gold looks like gold and the pyrite does not.

Real gold in nature can come in many different forms not just as gold nuggets. If you do have real gold be careful with this test. Pyrite is harder than copper. In fact the piece with gold colored particles inside may even be lighter than your other piece of quartz if the gold is not real.

What does gold ore really look like. If you look closely you will also notice that the large rock that the gold ring gold nugget and gold rock are sitting on has very sharp fractured and angular shape. Gold panning whether it s professional or recreational is supposed to yield gold flakes and nuggets washed out of the soil. But real gold stays bright even when out of direct sunlight and though soft does not fall apart when you touch it like fool s gold can.

Most people have no idea what to look for and even if they do find gold they might throw it out accidentally. Real gold also leaves a gold streak when scratched against a small bit of unglazed ceramic like the back of a piece of bathroom tile but iron pyrite leaves a greenish black colored streak.