Why Dig Them All?

[Lost&Found]

Everyone has different opinions about whether to dig all, or discriminate. Here is some information to help you decide. It was obtained from Eddy Current Technology Inc. and I've boiled it down for simplicity. Remember that most metals are not pure, but alloys with other metals.

This chart shows the conductivity of various metals expressed as a %IACS. What they've done is take a piece of pure copper of a specific cross-sectional area, a specific dimension, and a specific temperature and measured its conductivity (in Siemens/m). They called that 1 or 100%. The number that you see is the percent conductivity relative to the pure copper.

%IACS....Metal
108.........Pure Silver
100.........Pure Copper
85...........Deoxidized Copper
70...........Pure Gold
65-25......Aluminum, various alloys
25...........Pure Nickel
16...........Platinum
15...........Iron (99.9%)
8.............Lead
3.............Stainless Steel

Now do you see why you can't tell the difference between a gold ring (which is alloyed gold) and all that aluminum junk.
Also, do you ignore those Iron targets? Platinum is worth about $2,000 per ounce!

Discriminate or not?
Something to think about, and discuss. Happy hunting.
--Mike

 

[Mirco]

Everyone has different opinions about whether to dig all, or discriminate. Here is some information to help you decide. It was obtained from Eddy Current Technology Inc. and I've boiled it down for simplicity. Remember that most metals are not pure, but alloys with other metals.

This chart shows the conductivity of various metals expressed as a %IACS. What they've done is take a piece of pure copper of a specific cross-sectional area, a specific dimension, and a specific temperature and measured its conductivity (in Siemens/m). They called that 1 or 100%. The number that you see is the percent conductivity relative to the pure copper.

%IACS....Metal
108.........Pure Silver
100.........Pure Copper
85...........Deoxidized Copper
70...........Pure Gold
65-25......Aluminum, various alloys
25...........Pure Nickel
16...........Platinum
15...........Iron (99.9%)
8.............Lead
3.............Stainless Steel

Now do you see why you can't tell the difference between a gold ring (which is alloyed gold) and all that aluminum junk.
Also, do you ignore those Iron targets? Platinum is worth about $2,000 per ounce!

Discriminate or not?
Something to think about, and discuss. Happy hunting.
--Mike

I dig and recover EACH signal without any discrimination (I do not have one on Dual Field). To make the beach cleaner after those people who heavily pollute it ( and never are prosecuted nor sanctioned against like detectorists!). And also to have less junk signals for myself later if I ever detect the same spot/area again in the future. Throwing two big bags of trash into trash bins in the parking lot gives me more satisfaction than counting those miserable 0.96 cents typically collected in three-four hours of detecting in Orchard Beach, NY - the only beach that is still allowed for public (not "private") use in the big Bronx/Queens/Yonkers/Mount Vernon/ New Rochelle area with roughly 10 million people population.