ChrisB Posted March 3, 2016 Report Share Posted March 3, 2016 This may sound strange but I was wondering whether anyone knows of any instrument which can detect marbles buried in the ground? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steph Posted March 3, 2016 Report Share Posted March 3, 2016 Good question! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sclsu Posted March 3, 2016 Report Share Posted March 3, 2016 My best guess would be no. It would take some expensive equipment in order to be able to detect marbles underground. Glass is chemically similar to a lot of the things found in the ground, it would be tough to distinguish from other things. Glass is also not magnetic, so it couldn't work like a metal detector, which uses that unique property of metals to differentiate whether or not metal is present. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J_Ding Posted March 3, 2016 Report Share Posted March 3, 2016 Some marbles will come up with a properly designed and high enough quality metal detector. Green glowing marbles with uranium certainly might be picked up by the detector...head over to any number of 'prospecting' boards and you will see these discussed and sometimes examples shown. I wouldn't think the marble could be very deep...but this is just a guess. I would think that sufficient quantity of other atoms such as iron and antimony might ping' back with a good detector too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisB Posted March 3, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 3, 2016 Thanks for the education, its a question I have pondered for a while now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sclsu Posted March 3, 2016 Report Share Posted March 3, 2016 I would think think that any metal that is used in glass manufacturing would form a stable compound that would be tough to distinguish from sand and other natural things in the soil that are made of the same materials (in slightly different proportions). I believe uranium glass could possibly be detected, but again, only because of unique properties that it has. I can not think of a unique trait that glass (in general) exhibits that would be exploitable to locate it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J_Ding Posted March 3, 2016 Report Share Posted March 3, 2016 I should have noted that I had previously registered a response on a metal detector on a mib. I didn't at once buy a detector and go out digging, but I'll give you that...easily could have been some metal fragments in the mib that couldn't be seen or something I don't understand. I have access to one, so down the road, I'll hit a few more and let everyone know. Certainly re-dox reactions occur in some molten, colored glass from my understanding (imperfect for sure)....copper does with iron; and where the mib was when that reaction was halted might, in principle give enough metal with magnetic properties (reduce the oxidation number in an ionic metal to give some elements a full compliment of electrons), but I just don't know. And you are correct to note, when digging for metal, a number of other things surely can show up in a dig. I'm not going to claim a thing about reliability of this approach in the least. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I'llhavethat1 Posted March 4, 2016 Report Share Posted March 4, 2016 finely tuned GPR (ground penetrating radar) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lstmmrbls Posted March 5, 2016 Report Share Posted March 5, 2016 The only marble I know of that a detector would find is a steelie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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