13 Metal & Mineral Resources I Flashcards
What are the two major categories of minerals and give 4 examples of each?
Metallic: Gold, silver, copper, lead
Nonmetallic: Sand, lime, gypsum, phosphate
How much use of non-metallic minerals increased over the last 50 years?
Has grown by 300% and is growing at an average of more than 2.3% per year
What are the characteristics of metal?
Metals are opaque, shiny, smooth, solids that conduct electricity. These properties derive from metallic chemical bonds with delocalized electrons that move from atom to atom easily.
What is a native metal and what are two examples
Occur naturally in their pure form
Gold, silver, copper, iron
What form are metals usually found in?
Instead, we use minerals that contain metals, where metal ions are bonded to nonmetallic elements.
three principal metals in the most common
use today?
copper, iron, and aluminum
What two metals where first used and when?
copper (~4000 BCE)
then Bronze (copper and tin alloy) (~2800 BCE)
What was the original invention used to smelt metal?
Bellows
Slide 20
What do the majority ores include? (2)
Either sulfides or oxide
Define an ore
Ore is a rock with metal-rich minerals that are
concentrated enough to be economic to mine.
*Slide 23
Ore-forming geologic processes
What are the two main ways to extract minerals?
Open pit mining
Underground mining
What is the environmental issue with open pit mining?
Mining creates huge volumes of waste tailings. Tailing piles are often acidic and laden with toxic metals. Unvegetated tailing may be source of dust and runoff.
What is the societal issue with mining?
The towns that the mines are built around are abandoned
What are the Ore Forming Processes in the Canadian Cordillera? (4)
- Magmatic– crystallization and settling within a magma
- Hydrothermal– heated water transports and concentrates elements
- Metamorphic– growth of minerals from chemical
reactions - Sedimentary– weathering, transport, deposition
