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TIL my vinegar test on a 'gold' nugget from the creek gave me a surprise
I was cleaning up some creek finds from a trip to the Blue Ridge foothills and had this one piece that looked like a small, rough gold nugget. I've always heard that a drop of white vinegar can help tell gold from pyrite, since pyrite will fizz. I put a drop on it and waited. No fizz at all, which got me excited. But then, after about a minute, the spot under the vinegar turned a dull, chalky white. That's not right for gold either. I looked it up and it turns out it was probably a piece of weathered galena, and the vinegar reacted with the lead to make lead carbonate. I thought the test was a simple yes or no, but it showed me there's a whole middle ground of weird mineral reactions. Has anyone else had a common field test backfire and show you something totally different?
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spencer_chen66d ago
That "whole middle ground of weird mineral reactions" reminds me of the time I tried the magnet test on a rock that just stuck to everything.
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Oh man, that's wild! I had a similar thing happen with the old "streak test" on a piece of shale. I was sure it was coal, but the streak came out this rusty red color instead of black. Totally threw me, and it turned out to be some kind of iron-stained something-or-other. These quick tests are handy until they open up a whole new can of worms.
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