How Do You Test For Gold Ore?
Gold has been a highly prized metal for many years. Not only is gold mining a multimillion dollar industry, it is a popular hobby. As long as you have a surface exposure of suspected gold on a rock, you can conduct an at-home test. The same test described here also works for gold nuggets, gold flakes and gold dust found from gold panning. The same characteristic that makes gold so desirable for jewelry and industrial uses makes it hard to test. Gold is chemically stable; it needs to be reacted with a mixture of acids, called aqua regia, to dissolve. Prepare your testing solutions and place them into testing bottles. One bottle will contain straight nitric acid, and in the second bottle you will put the aqua regia. Mix the aqua regia in the graduated cylinder and then carefully pour it into a testing bottle. Aqua regia is made by mixing one part nitric acid to three parts hydrochloric acid. Scratch your samples, one at a time, across the testing stone to leave a mineral streak. Pipette
