Today's video is pretty different from my usual chemistry videos, but I thought it might be fun to show everybody what I've been up to recently. Don't worry, though! Chemistry videos will continue to be made on this channel.

A couple people have noticed that while I'm panning, at some points in the video you can see sparkly bits flying out of the pan. This isn't gold! This material is actually full of mica flakes, which sparkle and might look a bit like gold in the video. In real life you can tell they aren't, plus they fall through the water too slowly to be heavy gold.


The gold mine I visited was Crisson Gold Mine, in Dahlonega GA. It's a very fun place - you can pan for gold, use one of their many machines to process larger amounts or different types of material (my favorite was the rock crusher), and hunt for gems as well. My girlfriend found loads of beautiful gemstones in the buckets she got, while I went for the gold.

http://www.crissongoldmine.com/

The material I went through in this video was one of their concentrates, where they take 5 gallons of ore they dig out of the ground and run it through their machines to concentrate it down to 1 gallon. I don't believe they sell this online, but they have lots of other grades you can try out at home.

I learned to pan from Doc at the Gold Hog, who has lots of really great videos on gold prospecting. The video I used to learn panning specifically is the following:

   • Gold Panning Tips and Gold Panning Ho...  

Finally, nobody paid me to make this video or mention them in the description. I just really had a great time doing this and wanted to share it with you guys!