How Is Gold Mined In The Early Days
1. What is Gold?
• Why is it precious? Gold is a very precious metal. Listen to reporter Natasha Thiele explain how gold became so valuable and why the price of gold fluctuates. Find out how the ratio of dollar value per unit weight is used to calculate the value of an amount of gold. This clip provides a context to calculate ratios and percentage.
• What is the secret of its beauty? The Secret World of Gold is a documentary exploring the power and politics of gold, a precious metal with more allure and fascination than any other. Valued for its permanence, beauty and scarcity, people will lie, cheat, steal and kill in the name of gold.
• What are the properties? Gold is a soft metal with a number of interesting physical properties. Gold is both malleable and ductile. Gold is a heavy metal (density 19.3 g …show more content…
For many years until 2006, South Africa was the world's dominant gold producer, but recently, other countries with large surface area have surpassed South Africa, including China, Russia, the United States, Peru and Australia.
4. Mining
• How was gold mined in the early days? Panning – was a simple technique used to find alluvial gold, which was small nuggets or flecks of gold that were found in creek beds and under the surface of shallow underground streams. To use the pan, a miner would place a small amount of soil, gravel and/or sand into a pan as well as a significant amount of water. The miner would then swirl out the muddy water leaving gold specks at the bottom of the pan that had sunk to the bottom when the water was being swirled.
Shaft mining – when gold started to become scarce just under the surface of the ground, miners turned to digging deep holes, or shafts, in the ground. These shafts would be approximately one meter squared and could be up to 50 meters deep. The miners would prop timber along the sides of the shaft to stop it from collapsing and would use a windlass or winch to bring up buckets full of
• Why is it precious? Gold is a very precious metal. Listen to reporter Natasha Thiele explain how gold became so valuable and why the price of gold fluctuates. Find out how the ratio of dollar value per unit weight is used to calculate the value of an amount of gold. This clip provides a context to calculate ratios and percentage.
• What is the secret of its beauty? The Secret World of Gold is a documentary exploring the power and politics of gold, a precious metal with more allure and fascination than any other. Valued for its permanence, beauty and scarcity, people will lie, cheat, steal and kill in the name of gold.
• What are the properties? Gold is a soft metal with a number of interesting physical properties. Gold is both malleable and ductile. Gold is a heavy metal (density 19.3 g …show more content…
For many years until 2006, South Africa was the world's dominant gold producer, but recently, other countries with large surface area have surpassed South Africa, including China, Russia, the United States, Peru and Australia.
4. Mining
• How was gold mined in the early days? Panning – was a simple technique used to find alluvial gold, which was small nuggets or flecks of gold that were found in creek beds and under the surface of shallow underground streams. To use the pan, a miner would place a small amount of soil, gravel and/or sand into a pan as well as a significant amount of water. The miner would then swirl out the muddy water leaving gold specks at the bottom of the pan that had sunk to the bottom when the water was being swirled.
Shaft mining – when gold started to become scarce just under the surface of the ground, miners turned to digging deep holes, or shafts, in the ground. These shafts would be approximately one meter squared and could be up to 50 meters deep. The miners would prop timber along the sides of the shaft to stop it from collapsing and would use a windlass or winch to bring up buckets full of