Two questions about gold's behavior Options

[Sword]

I have two questions that have been bugging me.
1: Has fast does flake/flour gold sink? If I have a pan, and I shake it for 5 seconds is all the gold on the bottom? 30 seconds? I am wondering about scraping off the top section to speed panning.

2: Does flour/flake gold sink all the way to the bottom of a river? Related to this, how far down is 'bedrock' I know 'it depends' but roughly how far typically, a few feet, 20 feet? How can I tell when I hit bed rock? I have gotten to where I am hitting tight rocks bigger than my hands but I can still slowly dig through this.

[amorton]

Gold falls in water at the same rate as it will in air 9.8 meters per second squared, this is gravity acting on the object. The drag will be increased due to the density of the fluid and the shape of the gold. So the gold has the potential of getting to the bottom really fast the problem is not how fast gold sinks, its how quickly it can displace the material around it. The gold as a ratio of physical size to weight "sectional density" is heavier than everything else in the pan golds sectional density is 19.3 water is 1 and lead is 11.3 so everything else will be someplace between water and gold.

[Dypheron]

My experience shows that in a pan with mixed blondes and black sand five to ten seconds of agiation is sufficient to move gold to the bottom. With pure black sand maybe a tad bit longer. As far as scraping the top layer off I have done so with no significant loss, there is always the possibility that you lose the tiny stuff by doing so if you did not manage to get it all to the bottom. You can always pan again, which in my opinion is always a good thing. If I have time tonight I will post a video showing my process.

[Dypheron]

Well my gopro camera has disappeared and the webcam I have decided to turn everything grainy and purple halfway through the video. Damn technology.

[swizz]

Well my gopro camera

those are fancy