Energy and Minerals: Orientation

Perhaps you have never realized how many mineral products are a part of your everyday life. There is an old saying: "If it isn't grown, it is mined." That statement is almost true. The only exceptions that I can think of are the fluid resources of our planet - water, crude oil, and natural gas. But, still, all of these come from the earth.

Your computer contains a couple dozen different metals, ceramic parts, glass, and plastics - all of which are made entirely or in part from the nongrown resources listed above. Most telephone handsets contain components made from at least 30 different minerals. Your car, and the roads you drive on are all made from mineral products. Our standard of living is based upon mining, refining, and manufacturing.

It always surprises me when I see how strongly people react to a proposal to open a new mining operation. Hundreds of people show-up to protest, all of them driving cars, burning fuel, driving on roads, assembling at a building, all of which are made from mineral products. They are ready to protest any mining operation, anywhere, but do they really realize where all of the things that they use come from?

The big problem is that mineral resources have not been placed on this planet at strategic locations for our convenience. Instead, most of them formed from natural processes that occurred on this planet long before people existed. Sometimes this places them where we would rather not mine them, where we would rather use the land for other purposes.

These are not simple decisions. We want to preserve our environment and at the same time preserve our standard of living. These are conflicting goals, and preserving one usually means sacrificing the other.

This lesson will introduce you to fuel and mineral resources, how they form, how they are discovered, and why they are important. I hope that it demonstrates the role of minerals in our everyday lives, the uniqueness of mineral deposits, and the strategies used to locate hidden resources.