The size of individuaI gold particles ranges widely.
Commonly the gold in lode deposits occurs in particles of submicroscopic size. In placer deposits the finest flour gold may be too tiny for individual particles to be seen without the aid of a magnifier, but they may range upward in size to nuggets weigh-ing several pounds each. The largest nugget known is the Welcome Stranger, weighing 190 pounds, found in 1869 near Ballarat in Australia.
The largest nug-gets yet found in Washington are from the Swauk dis-trict in Kittitas County. A 73-troy-ounce nugget was found in 1900 at the Elliott placer on Williams Creek, and a 77-troy-ounce nugget on a bench of Swauk Creek above the mouth of Baker Creek.
Placer gold particles are classified as follows: Coarse.-more than 0.06 inch in diameter (about the size of a grain of rice).
Medium.-less than 0.06 inch but more than 0.03 inch in diameter {about half the size of a pinhead).
Fine.-less than 0.03 inch but more than 0.015 inch in diameter {about a quarter of the size of a pinhead).
Very fine.-less than 0.015 inch in diameter. Fine gold averages 12,000 colors (par-ticles) per ounce, and very fine averages 40,000 colors per ounce.
Gold particles that require 300,000 or more colors per ounce are called flour gold, and about 100 particles of this size are required to have a value of 5 cents.
Some flour gold is so smal I that it takes 1,000 colors to be worth l cent, and about 14 million colors are needed to weigh l ounce. Tiny as they are, each of these individual par-ticles can be seen when placed on a black surface.
One troy ounce of pure gold has a volume equal to that of a cube a little less than half an inch (0.464 in.) on a side.
