papa, you have a 2-part question: a) where is the gold? b) can anyone, or any machine, tell gold apart from junk?
For your first question: you are hunting beaches, so that's a good start. Swimming beaches will always have the highest ratios of jewelry (as opposed to junky turf at in-land parks, for instance). And to get the ratios even better yet, find out when the beaches are eroding out in the wet-sand-zone, and hunt then. Because when sand it on the "way out" (high tides combined with higher-than-normal on-shore swells) then the wet zone becomes mother nature's natural riffle board/sluice box. All the light targets (tabs, foil, slaw, etc...) is GONE
leaving only the heavier targets behind.
As for the 2nd part of your question: As beach-bat pointed out, this question has come up before often time. Because yes, you will often hear people claim they can tell gold apart from aluminum, because "they sound different" (and then they launch into complex speals about tones, musician's ears, softness, boldness, smoothness, etc...). Here's what I suggest you do, if/when you ever run into the people who claim there is a difference: Quickly take them out to the nearest inner city blighted ghetto junky turfed park, and turn them loose. See how much gold they can dig, while leaving aluminum behind. I believe they will quickly abandon their claims.
The reason a lot of people THINK they have just "heard a difference" when they just dug a gold ring, is the following psychology at work: The trick of "Selective memory". It works like this: You dig 100 tabs, foil wads, etc... Everytime you stop to dig, you subconsciously think to yourself: "this one sounds different. It could be gold" But when it turns out to be junk, you say to yourself "yeah, now that I think of it, it *did* sound kind of junky" and you forget your premonitions. But when you FINALLY get a gold ring, THEN you remember your premonitions, and think "aha! I *knew* it was gold"
It's the same phenomenom that happens when we think our dreams we dream at night come true. But the truth is, we dream hundreds of dreams per night, which never come true, so we promptly forget them all a few minutes after waking up. But when one coincidentally comes true (like the song you dreamed about is on the radio the minute your music alarm wakes you up), then you think "aha! I'm psychic!" But it's all just selective memory.
