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- There’s Gold In Them Thar Waters! GC4ZK5G
- Describe the mica schist (is it a solid rock? Pieces of rock? Does it break easy? Is it completely decomposed and nothing but gravel and mica? Soft? Hard? Be as complete in your description as you can.
- Locate some of the garnets. What is the average size of the garnets?
There is plenty of gold in North Carolina! The first gold rush in America started about 40 miles south of here. Since the first chunk of gold was found in Cabarrus County in 1799, people have looked for gold. But, as the saying goes, “Not all that glitters is gold.”
The spot where you are floating (or standing if you beached your boat) has undergone many changes in the past 250 million years. This spot was molten lava, buried beneath an ocean, folded and bent from tectonic plates crashing into each other, lifted high above the oceans to become the highest mountain chain in the world, covered with glaciers and finally, subjected to time to weather and erode.
All of those changes have caused the rock to undergo metamorphosis: a process of change. The rock has been subjected to heat and pressure. This has created mica and garnet schist. Schist rocks form layers of parallel crystals that easily separate. The mica crystals reflect sunlight and often looks like gold flakes. There are some easy ways to tell the difference if you found gold or mica. Isolate some of the flakes and try some of these tests.
- Take tweezers and bend one. Gold will bend, but mica usually will not. If the flakes shatter or break, they aren’t gold. Gold will simply bead up. Note that if you don’t bend it far enough, mica might spring back since it does have SOME flexibility.
- If you poke mica flakes with a pin, they will usually break apart into even smaller flakes, whereas gold will dent and spread like soft lead.
- Rub the flakes between your fingers. If they disintegrate, they aren’t gold.
- If you’re gold panning, mica is much lighter than gold and will usually float out in the panning process. Be more excited about gold flakes that stay at the bottom of the pan!
- Gold flakes will still look like gold in the shade whereas pyrite and mica won’t.
- Gold is a metal and mica is not, so see what your metal detector has to say! However, keep in mind that the detector won’t always detect flakes because they’re so small.
- Gold shines, but mica (due to the crystalline structure) tends to be more glittery in appearance. In the sunlight, gold nuggets or flakes will continue to shine as the specimen is turned to different angles and remain the same color. Mica will glitter as the different sides of their crystal-like structure reflect light differently. Mica will also change color when tilted in a different direction due to its color coming from reflected light.
- One more difference between gold and mica: solid gold will appear as nuggets, flake or as a vein in the rock. The rock will be composed of mica and may include garnets. Garnets will appear as marbles imbedded in the rock and may or may not come loose easily. Most garnets will have a red, brown or purple hue to them.