Re:Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home fro...
by hoseja on Monday June 23, 2025 @08:27AM
(#44355085)
Does XRF penetrate the sample? Isn't it a surface measurement?
Re:Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home fro...
by signaturefish on Monday June 23, 2025 @10:02AM
(#44355915)
XRF will go a millimetre or so into the sample AFAIK - it's mainly useful for finding alloy contamination, e.g. "this is 99.99% gold" vs "this is 73% gold and 27% other things" - you really want to use both techniques. Resistivity/conductivity is about average composition, XRF is about elemental purity.
Re:Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home fro...
by weberer on Monday June 23, 2025 @09:01AM
(#44355383)
They have handheld XRF analyzers nowadays. They cost around $20k.
Re:Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home fro...
by signaturefish on Monday June 23, 2025 @09:56AM
(#44355865)
Huh, impressive - I guess I'm out of date (and/or the people I listen to about such things have a working XRF already and don't want to replace a working unit).
(the two scales are due to price and bulk: the Sigma is about the size of a hardback book and a few hundred pounds, an XRF is the size of a large 3d-printer and many thousands).