Where can I find gold? Detailed analysis

From the article you will learn about where you can find gold, what is its value, what are the types of mining and where this metal is used.

Ancient times

With such a noble metal as gold, mankind has known many millennia. As a working material, it was never used because of its high specific gravity and relative softness, but it quickly found application as a material for jewelry and a universal exchange equivalent - money. This is due to the fact that gold is one of the rarest substances. In addition, it is not oxidized in air and water. But it is worth noting that there were times when conventional iron was valued higher than a noble metal. However, it did not last long: until the time when iron learned to extract and melt on a large scale. So where can you find gold?

Spread

This metal is found on almost all continents in various quantities, but not in all deposits it is extracted for economic reasons. If we take the settlement period in 2014, then the largest countries-producers are China, Australia and Russia. Then come the USA, Canada and South Africa. But where can you find gold in our country?

The extraction of rare metal was not carried out until the middle of the 17th century in the Russian Empire, and all existing reserves were the result of trade with Western countries. But in 1745 everything changed. The Urals peasant Yerofei Markov discovered a nugget of gold near the river, which he told the authorities in Yekaterinburg.

Now the town of Berezovsky has grown up on that place, where to this day there is one of the oldest deposits.

Also, its veins can be found in Siberia, Yakutia, and the Far East. Ingots of this metal are of great value as the country's gold and foreign currency reserves, jewelry, memorial banknotes are made from it and used in complex electronics, chemistry and the space industry. But where can you find gold yet?

Water

One of the most common children's questions is why the seas are saline, and there is no river? The thing is that the very rivers that flow into the oceans, wash their way from the soil with various salts and other chemical elements. For example, the water of the Black Sea contains a large part of the periodic table, but in very small doses. There is also gold there, about 5 kilograms per cubic kilometer of liquid.

The mines

Now all the mines use special equipment, which at times improves production productivity. But the classic method, from which it all began, is precisely the manual washing of the soil, as a result of which prospectors received gold sand. The fact is that large deposits with large nuggets are very rare, and more often than not, natural gold looks like small grains that need to be carefully and painstakingly separated from useless rock.

By the way, an interesting fact: classic jeans with rivets on pockets were invented in America during the "gold rush". The wearers complained to the tailor that because of the large weight of the purses containing gold sand, the pockets often tear.

Extraction

The main methods of gold mining are washing, amalgamation and chemical process. But first things first

Since ancient times, the first one has been used, which is the simplest and does not require complicated equipment. Most often the mines were organized by rivers or other water bodies. The idea of the method is to collect the rocks, and then to wash and sift. Dirt, debris and useless rock were washed out with liquid, and gold, due to its high specific gravity, remained in the trays. The method is used now, but on an industrial scale.

The second - amalgamation - is also familiar to people from ancient times. A similar method of gold mining was first used in South America. The fact is that this noble metal is easily soluble in mercury, and if the latter is evaporated, pure gold will remain in the distillation cube, and chilled and collected mercury can be reused.

Well, the third way, cyanidation, somewhat similar to the above. Only here the metal is dissolved not in mercury, but in a mixture of cyanide acids.

Is it possible to wash gold?

Can. Nothing prevents a person from going deep into the taiga, away from human eyes, and to find an abandoned mine or a new vein. But it should be remembered that, according to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, punishment is imposed for this, as well as for illegal trade or an attempt to sell this metal. So it's not worth the risk.