Facts
What percentage of mineral occurrences become an operating mine?
less than 1%
To calculate the value of a ton of ore you need to know this.
What is the grade?
What is a staking company?
Staking companies work for themselves to sell later to the highest bidder. They are sometimes hired by major companies.
The main horizontal direction or 'course' of any geological structure is it perpendicular to the dip
What is a strike?
Mixture of metals and minerals that can be mined at a particular place and time at a profit
What is ore?
This is sampling
Taking a small part of the whole in such a manner that it will be truly representative.
The associated mineral for nickel is what?
What is Pyrotite?
What is stage 2 of valuating your mineral deposit?
Test pits, trenches, blast - at right angles to your strike to a depth of 5 feet. Ideally 25-50 ' intervals. Fully expose the wall rock.
What are 2 prospecting methods that you will be using in the upcoming fieldschool?
Closed and detailed (systematic) traverse
Covering of soil, sand, clay, gravel, boulders, and till over a bedrock surface.
What is overburden (regolith)
The unconsolidated and unsorted ground you stand on
What is ore grade?
The content of a metal or mineral expressed as a percentage. example - grams/ton
This is the objective of sampling.
To determine the grade of ore exposed and thereby lead to an estimation of the assay value and the tonnage
Canada comes first in the world ranking for what metals?
What are Poatsh, Zinc and Gypsum?
What is stage 3 of validating your claim?
Follow up work - extend strike length and give reasonable idea of depth. Inc. line cutting, bulldozers, drills, pluggers, monitors. more in depth sampling.
You can find very fine 'float' such as heavy metals, gold, and uranium, by doing what?
What is panning? scoop the sediment along a river or stream, swirl it around, heavy metals will separate from lighter rocks. Once you have a few samples crush into fine particles and separate with a 60/80 screen
Exposed solid rocks. Important in field exploration as structure, mineralization and possible metal/mineral showings.
What is outcrop?
The overlying side of orebodies or geo structures
What is the hanging wall?
Slope control is important mainly of this reason
To stay within the ore body, but determine the assay boundary.
This is an effective and proven method for finding water
What is dousing? Can also be used to find ore body/mineral deposit (Ag, Au, Pb)
Molybdenum, Tungsten, Chromium and Uranium are known as what kind of metals when it comes to sale and purchase
What are Strategic Metals? These are stockpiled by the government. The sale of these metals is extremely limited.
Why would you want to look for veins when prospecting?
Veins are often quartz (blu/white/pink/other) or carbonate (calcium)
Parallel to the strike of your 'find'
What is the baseline?
The underlying side of an orebody or geological structure
What is a foot wall?
Explain the reasons for systematic sampling
- Primarily for assay & grade
- Purely exploration work
- Proving the value of a 'deposit' surface or underground
The original rock of the earth, containing valuable minerals such as uranium and rare earths. Light in colour and very resistant to erosion.
What are pegmatites?
Supply & Demand- are principal factors affecting metal price & changes. What does this mean?
- Past & present trends used to predict future prices
- Productive capacity (whole world picture)
- Stability of supply
- World ore reserves (new producers?)
- Cost of production (ability to compete)
- Secondary metal (scraps)
- Cutbacks by large producers
- What is the demand?
- State of economy
- Consumers? Producers? Government?
What else?
This is the first consideration to make when you find a mineral deposit
Gather estimates of size, content, and continuity.
What are 3 favorable structures to look for in the field?
Shearing, faulting, fracturing are indicating it is very weak, came up from magma
What is a dip?
The angle at which an ore deposit or mineralized zone or geological structure is inclined from the horizontal
How would you determine the size of the orebody and whether or not it should be pursued? give an example
Ex. Your structure is 25ft wide by 100ft long and 500ft deep representing 12,500,00 cubic ft of material. This structure would support 3 years production at 950 tons/day. Depending on the mineral content, location, associated costs, treatment, uniformity and type will determine whether its worth it or not.