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Discover how rocks and minerals are used in everyday items like school buses, cereal, bicycles, cars, and more. Learn about mining processes, environmental protection, and the importance of mining to the economy.
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You have learned about rocks, the rock cycle, plate tectonics & boundaries….SO WHAT! How does this relate to you and other humans?? MINING 101
School Bus? • Think about the kinds of raw materials used to create a school bus
Cereal? • Minerals- do you remember what a mineral is? • Minerals are the building blocks of rocks • They are solid, inorganic (not living), normally crystal-like, naturally occurring substances such as quartz or atoms such as gold, silver, platinum and so on
Do the items in the photographs have anything in common? If you guessed “rocks and minerals,”you are right! Thousands of things you use every day are made from rocks and minerals.
That’s a lot of rocks and minerals! We get all those rocks and minerals from mining. Nevada has plenty of mining & so do many other states. We live in a mining state & it is important to our economy.
Amineis a place where rocks and minerals of value are extracted.
Government Permits are needed before and during all mining processes
Satellites, airplanes and helicopters can be used to help find mineral deposits.
Ageologist is a scientist who studies the Earth and it’s processes.
Radioactive minerals like uranium may be found with a Geiger counter.
The drill goes deep into the Earth’s crust removing long cylinders of rock called cores.
Before a mine can be opened, a complete environmental study is done so the land can be rehabilitated during and after mining.
What about people? What about people?
Mining Towns Gold, Silver, Copper & Lead deposits are located in Elko County, Nevada Mining provides resources to remote locations: Transportation Education Housing Jobs
For Example in Nevada: Battle Mountain Trades Program Newmont Mining Corporation High school students learned building and selling skills.
Underground Mining Nickel Miners Underground Drill
Miner Safety All mining companies have extensive safety training. No one can go underground without it. Miners must be certified and demonstrate safety knowledge.
Extraction is the process of removing mineral resources from the Earth’s crust.
Crushers/grinders break up the ore to the size of small pebbles or sand.
Processing Minerals are different so many different types of processing are needed to remove them from the rock. Following are just a few processes.
Milling This rock contains gold. Milling is the process of separating the desired mineral from the unwanted rock (called gangue.) See if you can find the specks of gold.
Concentration and Flotation Some minerals are separated by washing, flotation or magnetic separation. Here a combination of water, chemicals, air and agitation make desired mineral particles float to the top of the bubbles.
Smelting Smelting uses high heat and chemicals to remove base metals and impurities from concentrates. Smelting furnaces can reach temperatures above 1064°Celcius. What would that number be in Fharenheit?
Leaching Ariel view of a leach pad at a copper mine in Morenci, Arizona. These pads are the size of several football fields. This one is being stacked with crushed ore.
Reclamation Modern mines reclaim and rehabilitate the land during and after mining is completed, returning the land to useful purposes.
Reclaimed by Starvaggi Industries in West Virginia. Before After
ForkCreek Coal Mining Co., West Virginia Before After