Minerals and Energy Resources PDF

Haban comes to Guwahati with his father A bright smile from toothpaste from a remote village. and minerals He sees people getting into strange Toothpaste cleans your teeth. Abrasive house like ob...

Haban comes to Guwahati with his father A bright smile from toothpaste from a remote village. and minerals He sees people getting into strange Toothpaste cleans your teeth. Abrasive house like objects which move along the minerals like silica, limestone, aluminium road. He also sees a “kitchen” dragging a oxide and various phosphate minerals do the number of house along with it. He is amazed cleaning. Fluoride which is used to reduce and asked his father “Why don’t our houses cavities, comes from a mineral fluorite. Most move like the one we saw in Guwahati, Ba?” toothpaste are made white with titanium Ba replies, “These are not houses, they oxide, which comes from minerals called are buses and trains. Unlike our houses these rutile, ilmenite and anatase. The sparkle in are not made of bricks and stones, metal like some toothpastes comes from mica. The iron and alluminium are used in making toothbrush and tube containing the paste are these. They do not move on their own. They made of plastics from petroleum. Find out are driven by an engine which needs energy where these minerals are found? to work.” Dig a little deeper and find out how many We use different things in our daily life made minerals are used to make a light bulb? from metal. Can you list a number of items used in your house made of metals. Where do All living things need minerals these metals come from? You have studied that the earth’s crust is Life processes cannot occur without minerals. made up of different minerals embedded in the Although our mineral intake represents only rocks. Various metals are extracted from these about 0.3 per cent of our total intake of minerals after proper refinement. nutrients, they are so potent and so important Minerals are an indispensable part of our that without them we would not be able to lives. Almost everything we use, from a tiny pin utilise the other 99.7 per cent of foodstuffs. to a towering building or a big ship, all are made from minerals. The railway lines and the Dig a little deeper and collect “Nutritional tarmac (paving) of the roads, our implements Facts” printed on food labels. and machinery too are made from minerals. Cars, buses, trains, aeroplanes are What is a mineral? manufactured from minerals and run on Geologists define mineral as a power resources derived from the earth. Even “homogenous, natura lly occurring substance the food that we eat contains minerals. In all with a definable internal structure.” Minerals stages of development, human beings have are found in varied forms in nature, ranging used minerals for their livelihood, decoration, from the hardest diamond to the softest talc. festivities, religious and ceremonial rites. Why are they so varied? Reprint 2024-25