floating gold

[Flying Scott]

Gold floats on water. You can make a sewing needle float on water. But the more interesting thing is, Gold will sink on lead
Place a small nugget of Gold on a piece of sheet Lead it will slowly sink into the Led.
If you don't believe me, Try it
Flying Scott

[Rowdy]

That's interesting, any idea of what physical process occurs to cause this.
Rowdy

[nuggethill]

Any thing to do with the electrons, gold has one more electron than lead 

[Flying Scott]

You don't just chuck a lump of gold into water expecting it to float, Has to be a flake of gold and placed on a piece of cigarette paper, when the paper is saturated it will go below the surface leaving the gold floating, same with a sewing needle. Something to do with "capillary action"
As for Gold sinking into Lead, Gold is heaver than Lead so will sink. It wont happen over night but it will happen.
It has been tried and tested.
Gold is nearly twice as dense as lead.
Flying Scott

[shivan]

I am not saying you are wrong, but the way you have described this does not make sense to me.

You are spot on about gold and the cigarette paper floating on water, it is the capillary action that will make the cigarette paper sink in thee end, but it is surface tension that allows the gold to float. Also the cigarette paper is not needed to get gold to float. I have almost an ounce of dust from Oallen that if poured into water will float, here is a gram of it


Now i assume the lead we are talking about is in solid form, not a heated liquid. Therefore it has a very strong surface tension even though it is soft and malleable (push your finger on a sheet of lead and it bends, your finger will not sink).

If you take a sheet of lead and apply enough force you will be able to bend the sheet. In fact you can even measure how much force it takes until the sheet starts to bend.
So how would a gold nugget with no force applied start to sink into a solid such as lead? If the nugget was big enough then yes the weight would apply force to the malleable lead and crush it, but it still would not sink.

Now take the gold nugget, i could place this on a piece of foam, by your logic the gold is heavier than foam and more dense so it will sink?
Heck just think about clay, drop a small nugget in clay and it may slightly displace the clay, but unless its a big heavy nugget, it will not move very far.

As i said you could be right about this, but to me it does not make sense, i would love to see if someone has successfully done this.

[Flying Scott]

I have never tried sinking gold into lead,
I did see a demonstration many years ago. It takes many months before you can see any difference and years for a significant action.
Perhaps you could check on line or in a library
Sorry if I confuse you with the way I explain things.
Sometimes I confuse myself, Brought on by old age I suppose.
Flying Scott

[shivan]

I have had a good look online and cant find anything like you have described sorry Scott. I could give you dozens of links on the properties of lead, but none of them mention gold sinking into solid lead.

If it takes months to years before you can see a difference, what did you see a demonstration of?
If you did not see the nugget sink how do you know it did and that the lead was not heated off site?

Unfortunately I just find it hard to accept things at face value now days, i need to know the how and why behind it.

[donnybrook]

Send me an ounce or two. I have the lead. I can then try this (ha ha) Donny

[cronicbadger]

Floating gold is a problem i regularly encounter up at Uralla. It's all flour gold, which tends to float due to surface tension, like little golden water skater insects.

When I'm at home separating the day's concentrates I use a drop of dishwashing machine liquid (not standard detergent) in the water bowl to break the surface tension so gold is less likely to float off to freedom.