Ore Bodies — A Beginner’s Course
The nine ore families: how they form, what they yield, and how the world divides the board.
Lessons in this unit
- Lesson 01: What even is an ore? — Tell apart a rock, a mineral, a metal, and an ore — and understand the words 'grade' and 'gangue'.
- Lesson 02: How minerals get sorted into families — Understand the one big idea behind the whole course — and meet the main ways we pull metal out of rock.
- Lesson 03: Sulfides — metal joined to sulfur — Recognise the most important base-metal family, its star minerals, and its 'float then smelt' route.
- Lesson 04: Arsenides — the sulfides' toxic cousin — Spot the arsenide family, its link to cobalt, and the one big safety catch.
- Lesson 05: Oxides — metal joined to oxygen — Recognise the oxide family, the metals it gives us, and why we reach for a furnace instead of bubbles.
- Lesson 06: Laterites — what's left after the rock rots — Understand a family defined by how it formed (weathering), the metals it gives, and why it's cheap to dig but costly to refine.
- Lesson 07: Mineral sands & placers — when nature does the sorting — Understand surface deposits made by moving water, and the easy physical way we separate them.
- Lesson 08: Carbonates & silicates — the green-energy rocks — Meet two hard-rock families that host today's critical metals: rare earths and lithium.
- Lesson 09: Evaporites — the salts left by drying water — Understand salts left behind when water evaporates, what they're used for, and the gentle ways we mine them.
- Lesson 10: Native elements & the whole picture — Meet the 'already pure' family, then connect all nine families into one simple map.