1. Note Pack 39 Chapter 16 Mining and Mineral Resources
Section 1: Minerals and Mineral Resources

2. Mineral Resources
We depend on the use of mineral resources in almost every aspect of our daily life.
However, our dependence on minerals has not come without a price.
The current challenge is to obtain the minerals that an ever-increasing world population demands at minimal cost to the environment.

3. What is a Mineral?
A mineral is a naturally occurring, inorganic solid that has a characteristic chemical composition and physical properties.
The atoms of minerals are arranged in regular repeating geometric patterns.
Native elements are minerals made of only elements (gold, silver and copper)
Most minerals are compounds (atoms of two or more elements chemically bonded together)

5. List three characteristics of all minerals.
Knowledge Check
List three characteristics of all minerals.

6. Ore Minerals
Ore minerals are minerals that are valuable and economical to extract.
Gangue (GANG) minerals are minerals that have no commercial value
Ore minerals are either metallic or nonmetallic

7. Ore Minerals

8. Metallic Minerals
Metals conduct electricity, have shiny services and are opaque
Valuable metallic minerals are native elements such as:
gold
Silver
copper

9. Nonmetallic Minerals
Nonmetals tend to be good insulators, have shiny or dull surfaces and may allow light to pass through them.
Nonmetallic minerals can be native elements or compounds.

10. How do Ore Minerals Form?
The types of minerals that form depend on the environment in which they form
1. Hydrothermal Solutions
2. Evaporites

11. Hydrothermal Solutions
Hydrothermal solutions are hot subsurface waters that contain dissolved minerals.
As they flow through cracks in rocks they dissolve minerals
New minerals crystallized out of the solutions then fill fractures to form ore deposits called veins

12. Evaporites
Water in the seas or lakes evaporates deposits of salts are left behind
Evaporites form in arid regions where rates of evaporation are high
Include rock salt and gypsum.

14. Knowledge Check
How do evaporates form?

15. Mineral Resources and their Uses
Some metals can be pounded or pressed into various shapes or stretched very thinly
Some are good conductors of heat and electricity
Alloys are formed when two or more metals are combined
Nonmetals are most widely used minerals in the world
Gemstones are nonmetallic minerals prized purely for their beauty, rarity, or durability.

16. Mineral Resources and their Uses