If you want something to pan out, you hope it will work out or succeed. You might have to wait a week after an interview to find out if a new job will pan out.

When you take a chance on something, you hope it will pan out. You might wonder if your cousin's business ideas will pan out or doubt that your friend's relationship with her boyfriend will pan out. The phrase pan out comes from prospectors whose method of extracting gold from streams was called "panning." Using a flat pan, they would swirl water and gravel, and any gold would sink to the bottom.