Gold is everywhere, and it isn't the only precious metal you don't want to miss in your pan! It can easily be worth your time to pan your ditch!!
Gold is just a peice of an artisan mine. You can find other heavies, agates, sand, gravel or clay...
To determine how much gold you would need to pan to make minimum wage, we need to consider the following:
1. **Current minimum wage**: Let's assume the current federal minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 per hour.
2. **Working hours**: Assuming a standard work week of 40 hours.
Let's calculate the weekly earnings:
\[ 7.25 \, \text{USD/hour} \times 40 \, \text{hours/week} = 290 \, \text{USD/week} \]
3. **Gold price**: The price of gold can fluctuate, but let's use a recent approximate value of $1,900 per ounce (1 ounce = 31.1 grams).
4. **Gold content**: Since the nuggets are 50% gold, the effective price per gram of the alloy is half of the pure gold price:
\[ \frac{1900 \, \text{USD}}{31.1 \, \text{grams}} \times 0.50 = 30.56 \, \text{USD/gram} \]
Now, let's find out how many grams of the gold alloy would be needed to make $290 per week:
\[ \frac{290 \, \text{USD}}{30.56 \, \text{USD/gram}} \approx 9.49 \, \text{grams} \]
So, you would need to pan approximately 9.49 grams of gold alloy (50% pure gold) per week to make the minimum wage.