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Rocks and Metals
Nature gives us some metals in their native form. Unlike rocks, they can be molded instead of crushed. We complete a Cookie Mining activity to show the difference between native metals and non-native metals. Non-native metals have to be transformed from their native form as rocks. A rock that contain a significant amount of valuable metals are known as an Ore. Ores do not act like metals, but metal atoms can be released from ores under the right conditions.
Case Studies
The periodic table of the elements displays 98 elements which can be found in nature, and the majority of them are classified as metals. Metals have many important properties, but here we will focus on their electrical conductivity and physical deformability.
In nature, almost all metals are found chemically bonded to other elements. In most cases, in order for the metals to be useful, these chemical bonds must be broken. That process is called smelting. Once that process is finished, the metals can form new chemical bonds, which we call corrosion.
In some cases, blending different elements makes the result more valuable than the pure element. These materials, called alloys, can be stronger, more flexible, or more resistant to corrosion than the metals that make up the alloy.
