3 1 a Energy and Mineral Resources

aloha and welcome to our video on energy and mineral resources the goals for today's video are to distinguish between renewable and non-renewable resources we'll identify which energy resources are fossil fuels we'll predict which energy resources might replace dwindling petroleum supplies in the future we'll describe the processes that concentrate minerals into large deposits as they form and then we'll recognize how non-metallic mineral resources can be used okay when we're talking about renewable and non-renewable resources the key here is that it all comes down to time renewable resources can be renewed in your generation in your lifetime non-renewable take much longer period of time so if we think about real simple one like if we take tree you can cut down tree you can use it for firewood you can plant nutrient it'll grow back in your lifetime that you can do the same process again so most plants are going to be renewable because they can grow back in time and they work that way non-renewable resources would be things like coal now you can take coal and you can burn it you can use it that way but it takes millions of years for it to replenish or to replace itself so you can't do this in lifetime that's why we consider it non-renewable now other examples of renewable resources are things that are inexhaustible which means they'll last forever things like the sun and the wind things of that nature those are going to be considered renewable resources because we have an endless supply of those things when the sun burns out we're done so it doesn't make difference when the wind stops blowing that won't happen until the sun dries off so it's kind of they'll always be there for us other examples of non-renewable might be things like nuclear fuels okay we can run out of the supplies that we have we can't just make more that way so remember it's time if we can replenish it it's renewable if we can't then it's non-renewable okay let's take quick look at fossil fuels obviously from the name implies they're fuels that come from fossils and fossils are remains of once living organisms so one of the things want you to realize that 90 of our energy in the united states comes from these fossil fuels so we're heavily fossil fuel dependent the biggest that we use for producing electricity is going to be coal coal starts off as plants like peat in bog moss or something of that nature you have these forces acted on it burial pressure so being layered underneath stuff putting those layers on top of it add pressure add heat because as it gets deeper inside of the earth it heats up and time and you'll notice that this peak gets squeezed down into lignite then into vitamins cola and then anthracite cold so it takes millions of years to form this and then we can collect it through mining and burn it and make electricity from it petroleum and natural gas form along the same lines you take once living things that are going to settle to the bottom when they die we'll notice that what we have is as this goes on these organisms are turned into natural gas same process you're applying pressure you're playing heat you have time we can get trapped natural gases and we can have trapped oils that way one of the concerns with fossil fuels is that what happens when we run out well we're exploring some other things currently they're looking at tar sands and oil shale both of these are very messy very environmentally polluting ways of collecting these petroleum products so while now they'll fulfill the need it might be time to start looking for things otherwise because these are very unclean fuels for us to be using okay so we've talked about fossil fuels and those would be likely the positive we would mine out and get things for there's other ones as well we have mineral reserves and mineral oars wars tend to be metals reserves tend to be other minerals that we'll use but reserves and ores are terms that we use when we're talking about having money so that means that they're financially rewarding to mine these things out there's enough of the material there that it pays for the cost of the mining and you still can make profit from them now they form through these three igneous processes hydrothermal processes and placer deposits what we're talking about is if we talk gold simply gold what we'll notice is if you have this intrusion of magma into the system it's going to be hot and it's going to cause things to melt so if you can melt the gold down then you have liquid gold and as this reseeds out it's going to cool and you'll have this gold that's melted and fall or flowed into these little cracks and crevices and what will happen is over time they'll cool down and that's how you can find those big veins of gold and things of that nature now whether it's hot water or magma that takes care of the first two when we're talking placer deposits what we're talking about is if that gold finds its way up to the surface and then it starts getting broken off and eroded it'll travel down river and as it goes down river it'll get placed and that's what we're talking about here is place or deposits where we're seeing this golden rivers and things of that nature lot of times if they find the gold what they'll do is they'll march up river and keep looking for it and hopefully they can find that big mother load that they're looking for now we've talked about fossil fuels we've talked about some metals little bit the lesson will go into little more detail the last one are these non-metallic minerals and these are the ones that we're going to collect for money they have to find in the reserves so that we can find them and make profit from them perhaps the most common ones we know of are gemstones so if we're hunting altered diamonds or corundum or other gemstones like that these would be mineral resources that we can make profit off of building supplies we have lime storm clay quartz around here in vegas we have an awful lot of gypsum so there's building materials that we can buy now and use those commercially salt table salt is one they actually mine it out with the table salt what you'll find is there'll be salt deposits down underneath they'll drill hole here and they'll drill hole here they'll pump in water dissolve the salt make salt water and then pump that out and then dry out the water and that's how they get salt and then also we can get some fertilizer materials such as potassium and sulfur as well okay so that's it for this video as always good luck on the lessons and we'll see you in the next video