Gold is a metal, not a mineral.

A prospector is someone who explores for minerals or other valuable resources for profit or sometimes just as a hobby.

Prospecting involves physical labor looking for any trace of the sought after mineral.

Many miners use a gold pan and pan along streams and rivers that have a history of producing gold in the past.

Others use a dredge. A dredge sucks up the gravel at the bottom of a stream or river and runs the gravel over a sluice box to separate the gold from the gravel

Hard rock mining is another method but is very involved compared to other methods.

Highbanking isn't very common but you do see it occasionally. "highbanking" is a mining process where you pump the water up to where you are working instead of bringing the gold bearing gravel to the water. The object is to work a "bench" of gravel up on a hillside as efficiently as possible.

Another method of gold prospecting is to use a drywasher in the desert. This is a method where you look for gold without water in desert conditions.

Yet another method is to use a metal detector. this is very popular in Australia and has produced some large nuggets.

There are numerous other methods such as "heap leaching" but this covers most methods that quite a few miners use.

It is a gold nugget that was found on the bedrock. It is a chunk of gold, maybe bb sized or larger. Larger than dust or sand. More like a pebble or rock sized.

A gold nugget is a clump of gold that is small and very precious. To find one in the 1850s gold rush would be a huge achievement.

Getting rich from gold prospecting takes a mixture of hard work, skill, experience, money and luck. You must be willing to spend weeks, months , even years trying to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together that create the conditions for a big strike.

Striking it rich does happen but most people quit long before they reach the level of experience they need to get rich. You may get lucky, but riches usually go to the prepared.

Outcrops, gravel bars, tertiary gravels, quartz veins. The main clue i use is to let nature do some of the work for you. Gold collects in creeks and rivers and other low areas and is concentrated there. If no gold is found in nearby rivers and streams, then there isn't much reason to try working up on the hillsides.

they earn about $50000-$200000 per year

Gold is a heavy metal, so when panning or even using a dredge just use the movement of water to wash away the lighter rocks all while being gentle enough to let the gold sink to the bottom.

How do you prospect for gold?...

Some common methods of prospecting are panning and sluicing. Use of a pan and a sluice are the most affordable to acquire. Purchase a pan that is around 10 inches in size and start testing gold bearing areas near the river. A good addition to a pan is a grizzly. Use of a grizzly will allow only material that is able to pass a quarter or half inch mess. Depending if a larger amount of material is to be panned a sluice will be best to use, also. Buy a shovel, a crowbar, a 5 gallon bucket, a grizzly to fit into the 5 gallon bucket, a sluice and a pan.

Do not dig directly in the river. Instead dig along the sides where there is no free flowing water. Make use of the crowbar to pry out the larger stones first. Fill the bucket up with water and place the grizzly in the bucket. The bottom of the grizzly should sit in the water. After removing enough stones shovel up the material and place in the grizzly. Shake the grizzly around until all the material has passed into the bucket. Material within the grizzly should be looked over for gold bearing material. None there, toss it. Fill up the bucket with enough material then shovel into the sluice and allow the water there to separate the material. When the bucket is empty wash any remaining contents through the sluice. Add clean water back into the bucket. Remove the rug from the sluice and clean in the bucket of water. Any material still in the sluice wash into the bucket. Being that there are still small rocks use 1/4 inch screen to remove them. Get the pan and place some sluiced material in it. Pan out the lighter material until only black sand begins to appear. Panning through the black sand will show if any gold is there. Isolate it in the pan and siphon it up with the bottle. This method of prospecting is placer mining. Dig deep enough and around the really big rocks and you will be able to pick them up with your fingers and not a siphon bottle.

If one is to dig in the river, then I suggest detouring the water and skimming the surface. The reason for this is to get at the fine gold that is deposited from the rains and flowing river. The gold will be mostly surface bound and follow the black sand. Use of a metal detector like the White's GMT should be able to follow the black sands which can be marked and later retrieved. If the river cannot be detoured, then build a suction device simular to a bait pump and vacuum it up.

Update to the use of a grizzly, aka classifier: There is a method of use with a sluice box that a grizzly of sorts can be added to the sluice itself. This addon has to be fabricated specifically to the sluice being used. Interestingly enough, a flat plate with small holes works best. Use of angles failed because of rocks dropping into slotted areas and blocking the flow. Being that some sluices have a funnel it is necessary to add a plate there too. This type of sluice can be found as a Cal Sluice. My old Keene with Hungarian riffles still works and I tried to update it and failed. A Cal sluice is very expensive as compared to others, but I have seen it work.

spaniards

Credit is given to Chief Kowee, Joseph Juneau and Richard Harris.

50$ Well it depends on where and when .. in areas OUT of the gold rush area a shovle would cost 2 to 4 dollars. In the gold rush area they could go up to $125 .. it all depends on supply and demand .. HIGH demand + LOW supply ... price goes up! that's economics 101 :)

Spain could have done it to obtain vast riches(silk,gold,velvet and spices) before another European country could.

The Spanish Crown wanted to increase its economic power and prestige in Europe.

After obtaining the wealth, it was now possible to build bigger, better ships for longer voyages. They owned more then half of north Americas land.

They were able to producing better and more accurate maps/charts of the world.

Since they were already tribes(Arawak, Caribs) in the new world, they enslaved them and began their colonization.

Black marketing is illegal trading, so it's everywhere.

A quick example: a barber must have a license. If someone without a barber license decides to give haircuts for money in his kitchen, he is a blackmarketer and anyone who gets a haircut from him is participating in blackmarketing. That's pretty low level, though.

Another example: in New York State the taxes on cigarettes are very high. Some people will drive to North Carolina where they are lower, buy a LOT of cigarettes there and take them back to New York to sell. This is tax evasion and the authorities will be on you like white on rice if you're found out.

Of course, if you're talking about the online game Howrse, see the related question below.

Pyrite, a sulfide of Iron. It melts around 1100 dgerees.

Pulled from reference: http://lfie.net/finance/what-is-the-melting-temperature-of-fools-gold.html

There are many different ways to do this. The most common way is to get a gold pan. You take the dirt, put it in the gold pan, put the gold pan in water, swirl it around in a certain way, and the dirt will come out of the pan, while the gold stays in.

There are also many other pieces of equipment that people use to more efficiently process larger amounts of dirt.

It is known as panning, usually for gold nuggets, using a shallow metal pan.

Kentucky does not have favorable conditions for finding gold. The geology is not condusive for finding gold in quantity. Most of the surface rocks are sedimentary and there hasn't been any tectonic,metamorphic or igneous event to make conditions good for gold prospecting. That being said, Can you prospect for gold in Kentucky? Yes, if you can find someplace to prospect, you can go ahead.

Gold Mercury Retort.

No, it was discovered in Sutter's Creek near Sacramento this started the California Gold Rush which brought many settlers out from the eastern United States to the western.

San Francisco was the closest major port city.

Early 1860s. The prospectors were mostly a combination of disgruntled miners that had failed in the California gold rush and Confederate deserters fleeing the Civil War. The first strike was at Gold Creek between Garrison and Dearlodge, but the rush quickly moved south to Nevada City and Virginia City. Helena, the state capital, was the site of one of the largest strikes and triggered its own gold rush in 1864.

Gold was discovered in 1858 and by 1861, 100,000 people came to mine gold.

A gold laptop will be expensive- maybe in the 2000 range.

No. Most didn't find gold, and went home broke. Some opened stores and one came up with an idea for a better pant. His name was Levi Strauss and he introduced brads to seams on a blue jean material so it would hold up better in the dirt and water. Another came up with an idea for a bread and it was for a sourdough bread that is still made today in San Francisco.