By IANS
Melbourne : Now mineral deposits of silver, zinc, copper and nickel can be detected through a glass of wine or soft drink, a research conducted by scientists in Australia suggests.
An acid present in the drinks dissolves some of the metals to form a solution, and then the metals can be easily detected in routine laboratory tests, the scientists said.
“In many cases, the comparison of metals extracted using wine and soft drink were superior than those extracted using conventional, and much more expensive, commercial solvents,” scientists led by Ryan Noble found.
The scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) tested red wine and a number of popular soft drinks.
The effectiveness of the technique is unlikely to be affected by whether the wine is a Shiraz (a variety of grape used in wine) or a Malbec (a black, mellow grape variety originally grown in France). And diet soft drinks are just as effective as those containing sugar, reported the science portal EurekAlert.
The chemical ability of wine and soft drinks makes them very suitable for use as a cheap extraction tool that can be applied to mineral exploration, the scientists said.
They are particularly good at discovering elevated levels of metals such as silver, zinc, copper and nickel, they added.
Results of the tests conducted by the scientists were presented at the recent 2007 CRC LEME (Cooperative Research Centre for Landscape Environments and Mineral Exploration) Seminar so that the exploration industry could be made aware of and begin using this new, unconventional technique.