Gold fever and group psychology

One of my tasks as a junior underground geologist, back in the mid 90s, was to sit on a stool in a puddle of water next to the machine that drills holes in the roof of the drive, and sample the little chips of rock that are flushed out of the drill bit with water. The chips stream back down the hole into a calico bag held open on a tripod, which I place to capture as many chips as possible. 

Each time the drill advances to the end of the rod, the driller stops and puts a new rod on the end of the previous rod to advance the hole deeper. At this point I grab my filled up sample bag, switch it out for a new empty bag, log the chips for the geology at that depth interval on my little log sheet, squeeze the water out of the bag, line up the bag in a row with the other samples, and go back to my stool to stare into the puddle of water until the next rod change. The samples will later go to the lab for analysis of the gold content. 

One day I’m slouched there on my stool with my head in my hands, waiting for the next rod change and staring into the puddle of water near my feet, when all of a sudden I notice a thin piece of gold leaf float by. My eyes cross and re-focus to the rest of the puddle and I see the puddle is filled with many little pieces of gold leaf. Instantly I recalled that not far away from where we were drilling now, we’d had a sample that was 180 grams of gold per tonne, way higher than the usual 2 to 3 grams at our mine. I imagined that we had just drilled into a really high grade zone. 

I jumped to my feet and asked the driller to stop and showed him the gold. He asked me why it was floating. Good question, but there were a lot of joints and other types of flat planes produced by pressure in this mine, and I imagined that the gold had been smeared out really tissue paper thin by this pressure. It seemed to me very possible that a piece of gold leaf might float on water if it landed flat, because of the high surface tension of water. I look at a piece under my hand lens. I can see a regular pattern array of tiny little dots. My head swam. I’m thinking, omg, I’m seeing like the molecular structure of gold!! 

I put a few pieces of the gold leaf in the driller’s plastic sandwich box and race up to surface to show everyone else. I screech up to the office to find Bob, the senior engineer, smoking a cigarette outside the office on a bench. I show him the box. He jumps up and says omg, gold! We have to show the managers! They’re in a meeting now! He grabs the box and runs into the middle of the meeting and slams the box of gold down on the table. Everyone jumps up. 

The mine manager orders guards to be sent underground to ensure no theft occurs. Another senior engineer runs off to find a piece of black cloth and takes photographs of the gold for the cover of the company’s next annual report. The chief geologist orders all geologists and samplers underground with sampling gear to collect as many pieces as possible. 

I go back underground to find a crowd of people all picking through the puddle for gold leaf. Someone is crouching over a bucket of water, telling me that if he swirls the water with his arm, the gold rises to the surface and sticks to his arm hairs, which he can then pick up easily. I do not feel comfortable with this concept of rising gold. Floating under certain circumstances maybe, but rising up? No way. 

I go over to the driller. He’s annoyed because his drill rig is now stopped, he gets paid by the metre, and now he’s not earning money. He says there’s more money in drilling than in gold. I ask him what colour the drill bit is painted. He says gold. I ask him when was the last time he changed the drill bit? He says immediately before I noticed the gold? I go over to my boss and tell him the gold is actually gold coloured paint. 

I’m ridiculed by some of the others for not knowing what gold looks like. I’m never going to make it as a geologist if I don’t even know what gold looks like. I ask the driller for his lighter, and we hold the flame to one of the pieces which instantly goes up in a puff of smoke. The others see this and go wtf. Suddenly everyone is a little quiet. Suddenly everyone is in denial and comments that they never really thought it was gold except for that one actual real piece which has now suddenly gone missing. Now the people involved here are pretty senior, guys ranging in age from 40s to 60s. Everyone slinks back to work. And that, dear reader, is how a junior geologist spends their time and how gold fever and group psychology can make for a good story.