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62 www.resourceworld.com O C T O B E R / N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 9 J ames Kendall Ph.D., P.Eng., is president of Gold Sniffer Inc., a professor at the Haileybury School of Mines and the inventor of Mineral Insights, a unique method of detecting and identifying minerals in the field. Kendall worked for a large gold mining company in 2009. His job there was to find new technologies for mining and mineral exploration. With four engineering degrees: Engineering Physics, Electrical Engineering, and Mining Engineering with Mineral Exploration courses; he was well equipped for the task. In 2009, Kendall asked a colleague, "If I am out in the bush, how do I tell if there is gold in a rock?" "That was my job," he said. "I was supposed to solve problems like that." Kendall knew that understanding the physical properties of minerals would help him find the answer. While doing research online he came across a graph that depicted the optical reflectance curve for gold, silver and aluminum. The shape of this graph for gold and silver is due to the relativistic behaviour of their atoms. When he saw the graph, he saw the answer. He explained, "The gold atom has one valence electron that moves near the speed of light producing a relativistic effect. This causes the valence elec- tron to be more tightly held to the inside of the atom. Therefore, gold's valence electron does not want to bond with other atoms. That is why gold occurs as a metal in nature. It also determines the way light is reflected from gold. This is what produces the unique colour of gold. Silver has a similar relativistic effect in the ultraviolet, but only gold has a unique reflectance spectrum in the visible part of the spectrum that gives it its golden colour." Kendall realized what he needed to do is to identify the micron sized particles of gold that occur in nature by zeroing in on their unique visible light signature. Kendall told the company he was working for, "I can make a gold detector." It was dubbed the Gold Sniffer. Kendall worked on it at the company for another nine months but was eventu- ally laid off, though they continued to support Kendall's research with money and samples. Later, they signed over the rights for the product to Kendall and the name of the product was changed to Mineral Insights. Kendall very clearly remembers the moment he figured out how to identify micron sized gold particles. On January 19, 2011, at 6:50 pm, while on an elliptical machine at the gym, Kendall had a Eureka moment. "Of course; that's how you do it!" He explained, "You take a digital camera, a macro lens, and a light source with even illumination, and you can identify min- eral features at micron dimensions. This is done by analyzing the digital image of the mineral surface pixel by pixel. Kendall says this method is like using 2 million tiny spectrometers to analyze an area that is 52 millimetres. Sophisticated algorithms were developed to process the digital image data to identify gold and mineral particles with micron resolution. Kendall said, "We developed our own computer language to take the measured data and process it automatically. It turns out that if you process this information correctly, you can tell how big the gold particles are. You can even tell what type of mineral is hosting the gold." Kendall started working with the RIC Centre in Mississauga (Research, Innovation and Commercialization), with whom he still works. They teach entrepreneurs how to turn ideas into profitable businesses. As a result, Kendall began working with Professor Jack Cole, at Conestoga College in January 2012 until April 2016 where they raised about $750,000 in government grants to develop the Mineral Insights technology. They had a lab at the Conestoga Campus and hired students from the electronics and mechanical engineering programs – some of whom put in 2.5 years on the project. Mineral Insights uses a Canon macro lens that Kendall says works very well. The thing that needed to be developed was the light source which took roughly four years. When you order MININGWORLD GOLD SNIFFER INC. develops a gold and mineral detector by Kathrine Moore