How fast do they sink in the soil?

[john sullivan]

i think we are looking too far an object will continue to sink untill the medium it is in ,equals the the weight of the object. have you ever found an alluminum can deep? copper is a hebercide will kill vegatation. figure that into the penny grass thought.

 

[Hobo lobo]

"an object will continue to sink untill the medium it is in ,equals the the weight of the object"

What does that mean?

Yes I have dug alum cans and lots alum slaw and pull tabs. In areas where there is no vegatation (desert) I have seen heavy objects on the surface for over 100 years.I also have detected galena (natural lead)on the surface that has been trheremuch longer than that, mabee thousands of yrs

 

[Coilfisher]

I found an 1891 Indian Head last week that was only an inch down.
Could not believe my eyes.

 

[john sullivan]

you throw a nickel into a swiming pool it will sink to the bottom, why?

 

[Hobo lobo]

you throw a nickel into a swiming pool it will sink to the bottom, why?

???????????????????

Why does a steel battle ship float.?

And someone once said there are no dumb questions.

 

[john sullivan]

there are some sitting on the bottom

 

[PSS1963]

I realize this is an old thread but maybe one worth contributing to. I've seen quite a few hypothesis as to why coins and other objects are found below the surface of the ground. I say hypothesis because they don't rise to the level of a theory in the scientific sense - that would be a higher standard of evidence. You can pretty much divide them into two groups: the gravitationalists (coins sink because they are denser than soil) and the depositionists (coins don't sink, they are covered over).

Each of these ideas has problems. Firstly, the idea that higher density automatically yields sinkage is not really borne out by familiar experience. Objects readily sink in less dense fluids, but what does it take to make a soil into a fluid? Soil can liquefy under the right conditions - this is called thixotropic effect and is usually brought on by a combination of water and mechanical agitation - think Kobe earthquake. This can easily be achieved in wet beach sand but what about a field? Without the agitation, even wet materials will tend to pack quite firmly, forming a barrier to an object, even a heavier one, passing through them.

What about deposition? Fine particles can certainly be borne on the wind and these will certainly build up if allowed to settle, but honestly I've never seen a dust storm where I live, yet the coins here are usually found below the surface. Organic matter? Nice try but this doesn't provide any lasting increase. Soil is mostly made of the inorganic silts, sands and gravels and the organics if present are transient - they break down and leave no lasting volume. I've seen this with my own composting efforts. Even after burying bucket after bucket after bucket of garbage in the same spot over a period of years there was no lasting increase in the soil level.

So who's right? My hypothesis borrows a little bit from both camps but includes an essential player in the drama - the humble earthworm. Think for a moment what earthworms do - they tunnel through the soil and periodically they come to the surface and excrete this soil in little piles. We've all seen them - they're called worm castings and they're made from the very soil the worms were tunneling through - eating it as they went, leaving voids as they went. Essentially the worms act as little conveyor belts, taking soil from beneath objects and depositing it above them. Dense objects like coins have no choice but to collapse some of these voids, sinking deeper in the process. Worms could be said to be performing deposition but the net amount of soil is the same - its simply moved from below to above.

Is this idea testable? Maybe, somewhat. I've heard of objects sitting on the surface of dry desert soils for centuries without sinking. These dry soils may be inhospitable to worms of the type and behavior described above. Its not proof but its corroborating evidence. My personal impression is that coins sink deeper where the top soil is thicker and don't seem to keep going into the coarser sub-soils beneath. Worm activity tends to be more in the top soil layer and their forays in to the deeper sub-soils are mostly limited to escaping the winter cold. What are your observations on this? How does the presence or absence of worms correlate with the depth of coin finds in a given location?

Food for thought.

-pete

 

[chuck ky]

look at sidewalks. on newer housesthe sidewalk is level with or lower than the yard. older houses the yard will be level with or higher than the sidewalk. if you've lived somewhere a long time look at some pictures and you can see the difference

 

[PSS1963]

look at sidewalks. on newer housesthe sidewalk is level with or lower than the yard. older houses the yard will be level with or higher than the sidewalk. if you've lived somewhere a long time look at some pictures and you can see the difference

Ever roll over a rock and find worm tunnels under it? I have countless times. Those worms tunneling under those rocks come to the surface eventually to deposit their castings and I can guarantee they're not coming up through the rock to do it - they're moving sideways until they find the edge of the rock - then they come up in the grass alongside. What is a concrete slab really but a big rock - geologists would say of the conglomerate type, but that's neither here nor there. Net effect is that the worms take soil from beneath the rock or sidewalk slab and deposit it on the surface - they never do the opposite. Sure, a few castings from wayward worms end up on top off the sidewalk slabs - we've all seen these - but they don't stay there. Either the rain washes them off or people scuff them away with their feet. If you extrapolate this over time, the sidewalk slab sinks into the voids created by the worms, same as the coins do. Not sure if its the same in Kentucky but here we have another player in the story - chipmunks. They love to dig tunnels under stones and slabs - its a ready-made roof - what could be better? And they can move more soil faster than worms can. I'm not saying that chipmunks make coins sink but they sure do a job on masonry. Around New England its not uncommon for a field-stone wall that's been standing for 300 years to suddenly fall down because chipmunks or red squirrels tunneled under the stones at its base and destabilized it. The principle is the same its just a matter of scale.

 

[Davethejunky]

I've found a few of the states quarters down six inches or more. The depth that they sink to seems to be related to how soft the dirt was and how many times they were ran over with the lawn mower.

DD

Or look at the date.

 

[braveheart1954]

Old coins on the surface at parks would have most likely have been digs dropped by other detectorists, heavy gravel area or old dead trees pulled out of the ground or other activities that required digging thru the decades like building and the tearing down of old pavilions.... Motors vehicles or horse drawn wagons trudging thru the mud and squishing coins to the surface while forcing some deeper.
Charles Darwin the famous Naturalist who gave us the theory of Evolution back some 300 years had a theory and a actual study with worms of why older artifacts were found deeper than newer artifacts and was called The Earth Worm Theory I believe. Saying basically that earth worms consume billions of pounds of earth each year worldwide...more even than all the total amount of humans at the time.. They are burrowing and sucking in a belly full of dirt (food) 24/7, below objects laying on the surface. And after digesting all this dirt and claiming all nutrients from it that they need they come to the surface at night (why you hunt fishing crawlers at night) to shit their waste (Clean mud) on top of artifacts laying there.. And for eons,piling more and more shit or clean Mud on top of the artifact until ...Wallah! after a hundred years of piled on shit, the coin now is 8-10 deep in rich dark shit or soil and lesser inches deep in not so good sandier. less loamy soil.... In the dessert 100 yr, old coins are basically surface finds unless wind has blown sand over them.. no worms there! This makes a lot of since along with the falling leaves,sticks,twigs and cut grass adding to depth which researchers say that in a woods with falling leaves... rotting leaves and vegetation in rich loam black soil will cover a coin at a rate of 1 inch every ten years alone with out the help of worms.

Do worms bury coins intentionally???

All past seemingly reputable artifact sinking tests were dome in rich soils that included worms because that is a definite way of helping things sink but only if a worm shits on it. I can go on and on... but if you have a decent IQ you should be able to deduce theories for your self why such items are at the depth you find them!

One quick note and scenario: Say you found a spot in a wooded area with rich, loamy, wormy soil that held BIG FAIRS in its day and that NO ONE, what so ever, has walked on that ground until you and Exp2 came along exactly150 years later around 10am Saturday, Aug. 6Th 2016....

QUESTION: HOW DEEP ARE YOU GOING TO FIND ARTIFACTS LOST 150-180 YEARS AGO THERE??? Think hard before reading further !!! Bet you won't have the right answer! lol

ANSWER: The depth of which you will keep finding the MAJORITY of artifacts dropped an average of 165 years ago is going to be the average depth of the first 10 items dug! Give or take an inch! Anything deeper or shallower has to do with the displacement of soil by man, animal or act of mother nature. So.. DIG EVERYTHING AT THOSE AVERAGE DEPTHS and if you are really sure no one has set foot on that ground in 150 years DIG ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING because there can be nothing less than 150 years old unless dropped out of an airplane! lol
*****One thing that stays on my mind I cant guess the reason why of is that in the deep woods I and yous I'm sure find coins at the base of old oaks and other huge dia trees. The only people most likely hanging out under that tree in the past decades were deer and other hunters who pissed and shit right there while hunting and using the tree for cover... so coins, bullets and others items dropped out of there drawers into the snow beneath them..... NOW the coins from the forties..say were all mostly at 6 to 8 inches. 2016-1945+ 71 years ...hmmm that is perfect for the theory of 1 inch for every 10 years! But in parks and areas with grittier ground those 45 coins are roughly about 5 to 6 inches deep! What's life without wonder ehh?! METAL DETECTING IS AN ART IN ITSELF! Confusious