The boy has spent most of his time outside the past two days going through the rocks in our driveway looking for gold. He has managed to find a number of them with gold-ish flecks all over. When I offered that it was likely “fools gold,” he referenced his minerals book and showed how the color of the gold in the books was different from the color of the gold on the rocks. There was no convincing him otherwise.
After finding them, he wanted to weigh the rocks because he understands more gold means more value. Unfortunately, his understanding was not complete. He was only thinking about the weight of the rock rather than the weight of the gold in the rock.
Once he understood that he had to remove the gold from the rock, he wanted to know how he could do it. When I told him I didn’t know, he became proactive and asked if he could look it up on the Internet. We were able to find some explanations of how gold is extracted from ore but they are not something that can be duplicated at home. Much to the boy’s chagrin I might add.
For the moment, his dreams of finding enough gold to buy Nintendo DS games will have to wait.