Why are minerals and ores located where they are?
Minerals are natural compounds formed through geological processes. The term “mineral” encompasses not only the material’s chemical composition but also the mineral’s structure. Minerals range in composition from pure elements and simple salts to very complex silicates with thousands of known forms (organic compounds are usually excluded). The study of minerals is called mineralogy. An ore is a volume of rock containing components or minerals in a mode of occurrence which renders it valuable for mining. An ore must contain materials which are: valuable in concentrations which can be profitably mined able to be extracted from waste rock by mineral processing techniques. Ore deposits are mineral deposits defined as being economically recoverable. Mineral deposits may include those bodies of mineralisation which are uneconomic resources, of too low a grade or tonnage or technically impossible for extraction of the contained metal. What is valuable to mine is generally considered in terms
