Gold
Gold is a very common mineral that is mined and processed in the United States and all over the world. One of the most common processes used for the mining and processing of gold in the United States is heap leaching. “The extraction of gold from low grade deposits has been one of the main factors in higher output since the 1970s” using this form of mining (www.pamp.com).
Half of all production, in the United States, of low grade minerals comes from heap leaching. It is a low cost, effective process which began at the Placer Development's Cortez open pit in Nevada in 1973 (www.pamp.com). Heap leaching “recovers gold from sub-grade mine waste or mill tailings.” The “native gold is taken into solution as gold cyanide and recovered by adsorption and activated carbon” (Halleck 2/19). It is very effective in removing gold from deposits filled with many other minerals as well.
The ore removed from the heap leaching is discarded onto open-air leach pads. Cyanide is then sprayed over the ore and sits there for several weeks allowing the cyanide to seep into the deposit. The cyanide extracts the gold from the ore and drips off of the leach pad on which the ore deposit sits. The gold solution runs into the “pregnant pond” where it is then pumped to the recovery plant. Zinc dust is then added to the solution causing gold and silver to precipitate. This product is then sent to refineries where the gold and silver are separated from each other (www.blm.gov).
The use of cyanide is a great environmental hazard. The cyanide affects the area in which it is used as well as the community surrounding the area of the mine. Some examples of cyanide causing hazardous situations are at the Zortman-Landusky Mine in Montana, the Summitville Mine in Colorado, the Kumtor Gold Mine in Kyrgyzstan, Asia, and the Aural Gold Plant in Romania. At the Zortman-Landusky mine 52,000 gallons of cyanide solution drained into the fresh water supply of a nearby town.
Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. "King Philip’s Herds: Indians, Colonists, and the Problem of Livestock in Early New England." The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 51, No. 4 (1994): 601-624.
The fortune of silver and gold discovered in Colorado’s mountains were locked inside complex ores consisting of granite, quartz and other metals that rendered them useless, unless they could be separated (Egan. NPS). Miners originally imported stamp mills and Spanish arrastras to extract the gold and silver but both these methods were inefficient and lost upwards of 70 percent of the sought after mineral (NPS). In 1867, chemistry professor Nathanial P. Hill discovered an efficient method called the Swansea process to separate the precious metals and opened the Boston Colorado Smelter in Blackhawk (NPS).
Colorado also has a rich mining history which began in about 1859 with the discovery of gold and development of new reserves, Colorado’s present day industry is a modern, innovative, safe and environmentally responsible citizen that extracts a wide variety of minerals such as; gold, Marble, and gypsum from the earth, valued at more than $2 billion each year. (Colorado Mining Association, 2007)
...graphy." Mining Techniques of the Sierra Nevada and Gold Country. N.p., n.d. 16 May 2014. .
The excitement for mining and excavating for minerals was sparked in prospectors and people looking for an easy way of profit in the 60’s.This second gold rush of speaks, despite most of the minerals they were after was more on the lines of copper, nickel, iron and the like, brought high hopes of those wanting to get rich fast. Though thousands had hope in making money from mining on their own, many excavators found little gold on their own efforts. Most needed to actually find work in mines. But, they almost got something even better. The v...
America has gone through a terrible past. It has once decided to own people as property and deprive African Americans of their liberties and enslaved them. Since then, the United States has attempted to repair this mistake through reparations. The legal reparations of the United States have unsuccessfully redressed individual and social injustices by failing to alleviate the pain caused to the African American community. The Harm caused by Slavery still continues to be suffered by the community through this day.
Throughout this mining process a byproduct is created called chat. The chat is leftover rock and waste from mining that did not contained the desired materials. The chat was left on the site because the Bureau of Indian Affairs thought it could be of value to the Quapaw tribe (1). This chat contained high levels of toxic lead and other harmful chemicals. It is estimated that there are 75 Million tons (150 billion pounds) of chat piles remaining exposed to the environment as well as numerous flotation ponds that haven’t been taken into account (4).
Religion is and always has been a sensitive topic. Some choose to acknowledge that there is a God and some choose to deny this fact to the death. For those who deny the presence of a higher being, “Life of Pi” will most likely change your thought process concerning this issue. Yann Martel’s, “Life of Pi”, is a compelling story that shows the importance of obtaining religion and faith. Piscine (Pi) Patel is both the protagonist and the narrator of Martell’s religious eye-opener who undergoes a chain effect of unbelievable catastrophes. Each of these catastrophic events leaving him religiously stronger because he knows that in order to endure what he has endured, there has got to be a God somewhere.
Sulfide ores contain roughly 34% of copper and are extracted from vast open-pit mines by drilling through the ground and blowing up the ground. When this method is used there is usually other rock situated above the ore, called the overburden, it first has to be taken away so the ore itself can be easily accessible to be taken out of the ground. Giant pits are produced that may be one and a half kilometres across. A road is built that spirals down in order to allow access for equipment and transport the ore out of the pit. The ore that is uncovered is dug up by large power shovels, loaded into dump trucks, and transported up and out of the pit to be concentrated.
In drastic situations, human psychology uses coping mechanisms to help them through it. In the novel, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Pi’s coping mechanism is his religions and his projection of Richard Parker. Martel’s Life of Pi shows how the projection of Richard Parker played a greater role in keeping Pi alive in comparison to his beliefs in his religions. During the period in which Pi was stranded on the lifeboat, Richard Parker kept Pi aware, helped Pi make the right decisions, and was Pi’s sub-consciousness.
Sex among teenagers is one of the most controversial topics of our time. The teen pregnancy and STD rates in the United States alone have become a major problem over the years. Despite these skyrocketing sex cases, sexual education is not being taught in some schools, and the ones that do are extremely limited. Parents, the government, organizations, and school boards do not teach the proper curriculum necessary for students to thoroughly understand sexual behavior. This essay will explain the need for proper sexual education in our schools.
First of all, religion is a key component in Pi’s survival because it leads Pi to believe that he has to coexist with other creatures and they are all one entity. When Pi struggles with the storm on the lifeboat, he has the opportunity to abandon Richard Parker, but he doesn’t: “I could see his head. He was struggling to stay at the surface of the water. ‘Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you, Richard Parker! Don’t give up, please. Come to the lifeboat. Do you hear this whistle? TREEEEE! TREEEEE! TREEEEE! You heard, right. Swim! Swim!’” (Martel p.121). Although Richard Parker
for coming as a fish to save him. “Even when God seemed to have abandoned me … indifferent to my suffering, He was watching; and when I was beyond all of hope of saving, He gave me rest, and gave me a sign to continue my journey.” This quote portrays how Pi felt that God was with him every time, and that is why he is willing to live and not give up. He prayed and prayed as he believes that it is one of the keys to
Before moving on, one must know that sex education is about, but not limited to the discussion of sexual intercourse. As a Buzzle article states, it involves a multitude of topics that introduce human sexual behaviors such as puberty, sexual health, sexual reproduction, sexuality, and more (Iyer). If formally received in school, these topics are brought up and discussed at age-appropriate times over the course of children’s junior high and high school education. Moreover, as I have introduced earlier, the way sex education should be taught is divided into two approaches. It is between taking either a conservative, abstinence-only approach or a more liberal, comprehensive approach. Abstinence-only education, approaches students by stressing the importance of “no sex before marriage” as be...
Throughout all Greek myths, the gods were always created in the image of man. This shows how Greeks viewed men in a positive way and thought that they were more powerful and superior to women. In addition, they thought men and women are unequal and that men were given jobs that required more physical strength. Although women played a role in Greek myths, they were not as important as men. Women had a more easier and feminine jobs than men. In the Greek creation myth, we see Hades as the god of underworld and Aphrodite as the goddess of love. The difference between th...