Metals and their uses
- Created by: Ellie cooper
- Created on: 02-12-12 15:35
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- Metals and their uses
- Extracting metals
- Metals are usually foud in the Earth`s crust. They are often combined chemically with other elements such as oxygen
- An ore contains enough metal to make it worth extracting the metal
- The methord we use to extract a metal depends on its reactivity
- Unreactive metals are found in the Earth as the metal
- The oxides of metals less reactive than carbon can be reduced using carbon
- Iron and steels
- Iron oxide is reduced in a blast furnace to make iron
- Iron from the blast furnace os too brittle for many uses
- Most iron is conserved into alloys called steels
- Steels contain carefully controlled quanties of carbon and other elements
- Aluminium and titanium
- Aluminium and titanium resist corrosion. They also have low densities compared with other strong metals
- Aluminium and titanium can not be extracted from thweir oxides using carbon
- Aluminium and titanim are expensive because extracting them involes many stages and requires large amounts of energy
- Extracting copper
- Most copper is extracted from copper-rich ores by smelting
- Copper can be purified by electrolysis
- Bioleaching and phytomining are new ways to extract copper from low-grade ores.
- Copper can be obtained from solutions of copper salts by displacment or electrolysis
- Useful metals
- The transition metals are found in the central block of the periodic table
- Transition metals have properties that make them useful for building and making things
- Most of the metals we use are alloys
- Metallic issues
- There are social, economic and enviromental issues associated with exploiting metal ores
- Recycling save energy and limited resources
- There are drawbacks as well as benefits from the use of metals in structures
- Extracting metals
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