What are Some different Gold Mining methods?
camden m asked:
i have to do a project in my social studies class on gold mining and i have no clue on what methods they used, i would like to know what the methods are in gold mining so i can get an A on my project
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gold mining equipment
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Miners during the early Gold Rush years wanted only one thing: gold. They didn’t care about elegance, craft or aesthetics. Greedy and in a hurry, they made do with simple yet effective tools.
The gold panner patiently crouching alongside a river is symbolic of the Gold Rush, and yet gold pans were probably the most ineffective of all the miner’s tools, even though that is what most miners used early on. As word leaked out in 1848 about gold in the Sierra Nevada foothills, early-day entrepreneur Sam Brannan cornered the California market on pans, picks and shovels. Without lifting a finger to do any gold mining of his own, he became California’s first millionaire by catering to the needs of the miners. Miners who couldn’t find pans made do with kitchen bowls or whatever they could find.
Another popular tool was the rocker or cradle, and indeed, this tool did vaguely resemble a child’s cradle. Using a handle on the rocker to push it back and forth, the miner dumped gravel into the top part and finer and heavier particles dropped through a screen, helped along by buckets of water. The bottom part of the device had slats, or riffles, that caught the heavier metals. After many shovel loads of gravel were pushed through the rocker, the miner would then use his gold pan to sort out the heavy minerals and, with luck, find gold.
Modern Gold Mining
Extraction ~ The first stage in mining is to break the rock into transportable chunks with special pneumatic drills and dynamite.
The Crusher ~ From the opening at the bottom of this big concrete hopper, the ore drops into a crusher that reduces the size of the rock.
The Ball Mill ~ The crushed ore is now put into a ball mill, which is a huge cylinder or drum that rotates horizontally and is about one third full of steel balls weighing several tons.
Jigging ~ A jig is a machine that uses a stream of water to separate gold and sulfides from most of the sand made by the ball mill.
Amalgamation ~ This is accomplished with mercury, which absorbs gold, forming what is called an “amalgam.”
Cyanidation ~ The precious sulfides must be ground very fine so the gold can be dissolved.
Treating Amalgam ~ The first step in treating the amalgam is distillation.
Treating Precipitate ~ The gold-zinc precipitate has to be handled differently.
The Melt Down ~ At this point gold from both concentrates is ready for melting down, along with any gold that may have been retained on top of the jig “bed.”
Casting ~ The liquefied gold is stirred and then poured quickly into cast-iron ingot molds.
Slagging ~ The impurities, being lighter than the precious metal, float to the surface as a scum that solidifies into a crust known as slag.
Finishing Touches ~ Having been analyzed for purity or fineness, the ingots are stamped with a number and packed for shipping.
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gold mining tools
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In addition to the above excellent answer, the basic three gold mining methods are:
1. Placer – eg Klondike area, Yukon
2. open pit – eg Barrick Goldstrike, Nevada
3. underground – eg Witwatersrand, South Africa
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