Minerals and Mining

Minerals

Every mineral is formed in a different way, this is just some of the many examples.
Evaporating salt water: When a body of salt water dries up, minerals such as Gypsum and Halite are left behind
http://www.ehow.com/video_4997359_minerals-found-salt-water_.html

Metamorphic rocks: When changes in temperature, pressure, or chemical make up alter a rock metamorphism takes place. Examples of this would be Garnet, Mica, Talc, and Calcite.

Limestones: Crystalized dissolved materials at the bottom of lakes and seas. Examples include Calcite and Dolomite.



Gypsum



Pegmatites: As magma rises upward toward the earths crust, it can form tear-drop shaped bodies. Exaples are gemstones such as Topaz and Tourmaline.

Plutons: As magma rises upward toward the earths crust, it can sometimes stop moving and slowly cools forming million of mineral cryistals. Examples include Mica, Quartz, and Feldspar.

Mining

Rock and minerals are extracted using one of two methods.

Surface Mining

When mineral deposits are located at or near the surface of the earth. Types of surface mines are open pit, quarries, and surface coal mines.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2632068?uid=3739920&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21100816584101

Subsurface Mining

This is used when minerals are located too far beneath the surface to use surface mining. Requires passage wasys to be dug to get to the minerals.

Food Web

In a food chain, energy is passed from one link to another. When a herbivore eats, only a fraction of the energy becomes new body mass. The rest of the energy is lost as waste or used up by the herbivore to carry out its daily life. Therefore, when the herbivore is eaten by a carnivore, it passes only a small amount of total energy to the carnivore. Of the energy transferred from the herbivore to the carnivore, some energy will be wasted by the carnivore. The carnivore then has to eat many herbivores to get enough energy to grow.

Video summery: http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/27997-assignment-discovery-the-food-web-video.htm

Plants

Plants are called producers because they are able to use light energy from the Sun to produce food from carbon dioxide and water.

Animals

Animals cannot make their own food so they must eat plants and/or other animals. They are called consumers. There are three groups of consumers.

ConsumersPrimary Consumer-Animals that eat only plants are called herbivores

Secondary Consumers-Animals that eat other animals are called carnivores.

Tertiary- Carnivores that eat other carnivores are called tertiary consumers

Decomposers

Decomposers which feed on decaying matter.
These decomposers speed up the decaying process that releases mineral salts back into the food chain for absorption by plants as nutrients.

Rock Cycle

What is the Rock Cycle
The rock cycle is a group of changes. Igneour rock can change into sedimentary rock or into metamorphic rock. Sedimentary rock can change into metamorphic rockor into igneous rock. Metamorphic rock can change into igneous or sedimentary rock.
THE ROCK CYCLE NEVER ENDS.

Three Types of Rocks
Igneous Rocks: Are formed from the cooling of molten rock.
Sedimentary Rocks: Formed in layers as the result of moderate pressure on accumlated sediments.
Metamorphic Rocks: Formed from older igneous or sedimentary rocks under intense heat and/or pressure at considerable depths beneath the earth's surface.

http://www.schooltube.com/video/503ca205aae459f47494/The-Rock-Cycle

Killer Bee

What Is It?
The Africanized Honey Bee is a hybrid of one of the several European Honey Bee subspecies and the African Honey Bee.

Apperance:
Has a general appearance of the more temperamental European Honey Bee. However, they are slightly smaller, but only microscopic measurements in a laboratory would be able to distinguish between the two. They are robust, 3/4 of an inch in length, and are covered in fuzz. They are brownish in color with black stripes that aren't as distinct as those on wasps or hornets. They have four clear wings that are attached to the thorax, which is the middle section of the body. The six legs are also attached to the bottom of the thorax. The abdomen is larger than the thorax and ends in the stinger, and the head is smaller than both of the sections. The two compound eyes are large and bulbous and allow the Africanized Honey Bee to see ultraviolet rays, enabling them to fly at night. The queens are the largest bees in the social structure, followed by the drones and then the workers.

Behavior:
Africanized Honey Bees will attack when unprovoked, and they respond rapidly and in large numbers to disturbances that European Honey Bees would ignore. Like European Honey Bees, Africanized Honey Bees can sting only once; they deliver a venom identical to that of European Honey Bees. Both types of bee die shortly after leaving their stings and ends of their abdomen in their victim.

How They Got Here:
Honey bees are not native to the Western Hemisphere. European settlers brought most honey bees to the Americas approximately 400 years ago. However, European Honey Bees did not perform well in the tropical climate of South America. African Honey Bees were brought to the Western hemisphere in 1956, when the Brazilian government asked Dr. Warwick Kerr, a geneticist, to create a bee that could survive Brazil's tropical climate. The European Honey Bee had not been able to successfully withstand heat and predation. It was hoped that African Honey Bees, having proved themselves successful for millions of years in the tropics, could bred with the European bee. The goal was to create a bee which was gentle, yet successful in the tropics. However, in 1957, some of them got loose and set up housekeeping in the tropics of Brazil. They've been spreading ever since.

Laws Of Thermodynamics

Zeroth Law:
This law recognizes that if two systems are in thermal equilibrium with a third, they are also in thermal equilibrium with each other, thus supporting the notions of temperature and heat.

First Law:
This law distinguishes between two kinds of physical process, namely energy transfer as work, and energy transfer as heat. It tells how this shows the existence of a mathematical quantity called the internal energy of a system. The internal energy obeys the principle of conservation of energy but work and heat are not defined as separately conserved quantities. Equivalently, the first law of thermodynamics states that perpetual motion machines of the first kind are impossible.

Second Law:
This law distinguishes between reversible and irreversible physical processes. It tells how this shows the existence of a mathematical quantity called the entropy of a system, and thus it expresses the irreversibility of actual physical processes by the statement that the entropy of an isolated macroscopic system never decreases. Equivalently, perpetual motion machines of the second kind are impossible.

Third Law:
This law concerns the entropy of a perfect crystal at absolute zero temperature, and implies that it is impossible to cool a system to exactly absolute zero, or, equivalently, that perpetual motion machines of the third kind are impossible.

History:
In about 1797, Count Rumford (born Benjamin Thompson) showed that mechanical action can generate indefinitely large amounts of heat, so challenging the caloric theory. The historically first established thermodynamic principle which eventually became the second law of thermodynamics was formulated by Sadi Carnot during 1824. By 1860, as formalized in the works of those such as Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson, two established principles of thermodynamics had evolved, the first principle and the second principle, later restated as thermodynamic laws. By 1873, for example, thermodynamicist Josiah Willard Gibbs, in his memoir Graphical Methods in the Thermodynamics of Fluids, clearly stated the first two absolute laws of thermodynamics. Some textbooks throughout the 20th century have numbered the laws differently. In some fields removed from chemistry, the second law was considered to deal with the efficiency of heat engines only, whereas what was called the third law dealt with entropy increases. Directly defining zero points for entropy calculations was not considered to be a law. Gradually, this separation was combined into the second law and the modern third law was widely adopted.