GEOL 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Artisanal Mining, Bering Sea Gold, Electrical Resistivity And Conductivity

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering
• Course: GEOL 102
• Professor: Ronald C Peterson

Document Summary

Valuable: rare, chemically inert, limited amount, sign of prestige and wealth, useful (soft and can be worked) Used in fillings because they don"t react, and it"s a soft metal that can be worked. Can be made into wire, moulded because it"s ductile. Extraction: large open pits: low grade ore, mined in huge amounts of rock, pulverize and heap leach with cyanide, using a chemical compound (sodium cyanide nacn) to soak the powdered rocks. Cyanide complex is formed that they collect and get out of solution: underground mining from veins: high grade ore, placer gold deposits. Water is an issue in gold extraction: often have to pump up large amounts of it for mines. Cyanide is poisonous and toxic: cyanide spills, floods, although it"s toxic, it causes only short term damage --> breaks down. Arsenic, selenium, lead, zinc and drainage of these even more dangerous elements.