Mining Rocks on an Industrial Scale Essay

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Rock Mining

Mining might have been the second earliest humankind activity after agriculture. The two endeavors were together the primary industries of the first civilizations. Little has changed in terms of the significance of these industries to humankind. From the ancient times to date, mining has played a significant role in human existence. Here the term mining refers to the extraction from the earth of any naturally occurring mineral substance for utilitarian purposes. After minerals have been extracted, they can be sold in open markets, enabling the countries that have these minerals to get paid by those that do not. This results in the countries that have minerals to be the great-powers of the world while those that do not to suffer from lower living standards. There are two general types of mined minerals geologically, these are:

Mineral: this refers to a naturally formed inorganic compound that has an orderly internal structure and a specific/characteristic crystal form, chemical composition and physical properties.

Rock: this refers to any naturally occurring aggregate made of one or more different types of minerals (Introduction to mining, n.d).

The Process

The core of mining in the extraction of minerals is to move excavations from the surface deep into the earth where the mineral deposits lie. Usually, these excavations (openings) into the earth surface are for allowing workers to access the underground deposits. However, boreholes are at times dug to extracts mineral deposits from the earth. These fields made up of boreholes are known as mines, even if the workers do not get to the geologic level of the mineral deposit. It is crucial to note that when a mineral has been determined to be economically viable with some confidence, the mineral occurrence is then referred to as ore or ore deposit. If the method used for excavating the mineral is entirely operated from earth's surface, the mine is called a surface mine. If the excavation method requires only openings into the ground for workers to enter below the surface of the earth, then the mine is called an underground mine. The characteristics of the procedure of excavation, its layout and the tools and equipments used in the mine differentiate each mining method.

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The characteristics or details are determined by the legal, geologic, economic, environmental and physical conditions that are associated with the mineral ore being excavated (Introduction to mining, n.d).

For people to use the rock deposits from earth they must collect them. Rocks from underneath the earth are collected though a process referred to as mining. The powerful equipments and machines used to extract rocks from deep inside the earth are referred to as miners. The process of gathering rocks from underneath the surface using machines is referred to as underground mining. Rocks have always been of importance to humankind; from the prehistoric use of rocks as tools, to today's use of rocks such as marbles and granite for countertops and floors. Other high value rocks such as diamonds are used to make jewelry. Geologists use several different methods to identify rocks. One way of identifying a rock is to conduct a scientific experiment. Another method which is quite simple is to scratch a rock against another to know its hardness or to rub a rock really hard on another hard surface so as to know its streak color (Zappa, 2011).

While on one hand geological classification of rocks based on their mineral content, origin or geological structure is useful for showing certain characteristics or trends, such classification of rocks provides little or no details to an….....

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