Gold Tests for Dummies

We've noticed around these parts that the folks at Leaf Group have discovered that some of their content is, shall we say, "not up to snuff." Apparently, they've assembled a team of self-appointed niche specialists to perform rewrites on the inferior content they've identified ("inferior" seems to mean "not SEO-friendly" as opposed to "bogus"). One of the cleanup team in the science space is Laurie Brenner, whose byline we found on the Sciencing.com article "How to Test a Rock for Gold."

Brenner's post rewrites an older eHow article that had been ported to Sciencing/com, an article originally penned by an anonymous contributor. That worthy spent the entire article trying to help the wannabe prospector differentiate native gold from pyrite (known to some as fool's gold). Much of what appeared within it was misleading, incomplete, or just plain wrong.
Brenner did little more than reword the original article, adding a section on how gold ore is processed and a nod to hiring a professional assayer. Other than that, Laurie's reword is, frankly, rubbish. We say that because of some of her claims, including (but not limited to),

• "...weight alone is not enough to identify real gold in a rock." – No duh. Need we say more?
• "Fool’s gold scratches glass whereas real gold does not." – Not necessarily: pyrite hardness is about the same as glass, not to mention that other, softer minerals (e.g., micas) are also confused with native gold.
• "Iron pyrite is attracted to magnets, but real gold is not magnetic." – Utter bullshit. Pyrite is not attracted to a magnet.
• "California miners in the 1840s used sluice boxes to siphon gold from sand or crushed rock..." – Maybe Brenner should look up "siphon."
• "Gold typically collects within the ridges [of a sluice box]..." – No, it collects in the troughs.

Laurie's most useless suggestion, however, for the wannabe miner is to,

"Take a rock that contains gold in it – this process works best on quartz rocks – and set it inside a glass jar. Add white cooking vinegar to the jar, covering the entire rock and then some with the vinegar. The acid-based vinegar slowly dissolves the quartz crystals surrounding the gold..." 

This from a freelancer who chirps that a "stint as Manager of the California State Mining and Mineral Museum in California's gold country served to deepen her interest in science..." Let us make some corrections:

• There's no such thing as a "quartz rock." Perhaps Brenner meant vein quartz?
• Vinegar is not "acid-based," it is acid - acetic acid, to be precise.
• Sure, vinegar will dissolve quartz... in a few thousand years.

Yup, this is just another case of a self-proclaimed "experienced freelancer" bullshitting for bucks... also known as a Dumbass of the Day (her eighth under the names Laurie Reeves and Laurie Brenner).

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