Earth Science

Can be replenished over a fairly short period of time (months-decades)

Refer to the amount of material that we can use, weather discovered or undiscovered.

Refer to a fraction or portion of a resource that are already discovered and already feasible to be extracted and used.

Natural resource that cannot be re-made or re-grown at a scale comparable to its consumption require millions of years to form and accumulate.

Concentration of naturally occurring material from earth’s crust that can be extracted and processed into new material

are non-renewable resources because the amounts that exist are finite although most are very abundant.

the physical work of removing the ore begins. Some mines are open pit while other are underground operations.

the ore involves a combination of grinding and crushing it into tiny fragments. Huge jaw crushers and cone crushers break the ore to a gravel-like consistency.

The ore slurry is then separated by a wet flotation process. Flotation reagents and frothers are added to the slurry which cause the mineral-laden compounds to attach themselves to air bubbles that are introduced by a compressor

The mineral concentrate may contain some "pure" metal, but more commonly it consists of metal that is bound in metal sulphide compounds.