--- title: Metals, mining and what they cost — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Metals, mining and what they cost», a lesson of the geography course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Almost every metal in your house began as a rock. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/) / Metals, mining and what they cost # Metals, mining and what they cost Lesson 60 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 19 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/0/) — Almost every metal in your house began as a rock. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/1/) — Rocks with enough metal in them to be worth digging are called ores, and smelting heats the ore with a fuel such as charcoal or coke to free the metal. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/2/) — Long ago people learned to mix copper with tin to make bronze, hard enough for tools and swords, and tin from Cornwall was traded across Europe for thousands of years. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/3/) — Later iron took over; with a little carbon it becomes steel, the most used metal material of all. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/4/) — Your phone holds dozens of metals, among them lithium, cobalt, copper and rare earth elements. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/5/) — To get them, open-pit mines dig holes more than a kilometre deep and leave mountains of waste rock, and some mines poison rivers. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/6/) — Mining has a human cost too: Indigenous people were forced to dig silver in Peru and Bolivia, enslaved Africans dug gold in Brazil, and today children have been found working in some small cobalt mines in the Congo. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/7/) — Recycling metals uses far less energy than mining new ore. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/8/) — Metals usually come from ores, rocks containing enough metal to be worth mining. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/9/) — Smelting heats ore with fuel such as charcoal or coke (a fuel made from coal) to free the metal. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/10/) — Bronze is copper mixed with tin, and Cornish tin was traded across Europe for thousands of years. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/11/) — Iron is the most used metal, and steel is iron with a little carbon, making it stronger. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/12/) — Phones and electric cars need dozens of metals, including lithium, cobalt, copper and rare earth elements. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/13/) — Open-pit mines dig huge holes, some over a kilometre deep, and leave mountains of waste rock. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/14/) — Mining can poison rivers with acid and toxic metals such as mercury and arsenic. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/15/) — Some cobalt in batteries comes from small mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where children have been found working. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/16/) — European colonisers forced Indigenous people to mine silver in Peru and Bolivia, and enslaved Africans to dig gold in Brazil. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/17/) — Mines today are often on Indigenous land, and in 2020 a mining company blew up the Juukan Gorge rock shelters in Australia, used by Aboriginal people for 46,000 years. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/60-metals-mining-and-what-they-cost/18/) — Recycling metals uses much less energy than mining new ore, and aluminium can be recycled again and again. - ← previous: [Coal, oil and gas](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/59-coal-oil-and-gas/) - next →: [The map of the Just So Stories: from the North Atlantic to the Limpopo, the Amazon and Surrey](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/61-the-map-of-the-just-so-stories-from-the-north-atlantic-to-the-limpopo-and-surrey/) - ↑ back to [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/)