9781422285541

COPPER NORTH AMERICAN NATURAL RESOURCES

John Perritano

NORTH AMERICAN NATURAL RESOURCES COPPER

North American Natural Resources Coal Copper Freshwater Resources Gold and Silver Iron Marine Resources Natural Gas Oil Renewable Energy Salt Timber and Forest Products Uranium

COPPER NORTH AMERICAN NATURAL RESOURCES

John Perritano

MASON CREST

Mason Crest 450 Parkway Drive, Suite D

Broomall, PA 19008 www.masoncrest.com

© 2016 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

MTM Publishing, Inc. 435 West 23rd Street, #8C New York, NY 10011 www.mtmpublishing.com

President: Valerie Tomaselli Vice President, Book Development: Hilary Poole Designer: Annemarie Redmond

Illustrator: Richard Garratt Copyeditor: Peter Jaskowiak Editorial Assistant: Andrea St. Aubin Series ISBN: 978-1-4222-3378-8 ISBN: 978-1-4222-3380-1 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4222-8554-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Perritano, John. Copper / by John Perritano. pages cm. — (North American natural resources) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4222-3380-1 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-4222-3378-8 (series) — ISBN 978-1-4222-8554-1 (ebook) 1. Copper—Juvenile literature. 2. Copper—Metallurgy—Juvenile literature. 3. Copper mines and mining—Juvenile literature. I. Title. TN780.P45 2015 669.3—dc23 2015005846

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

First printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 7 Chapter One: History 9 Chapter Two: Extraction 18 Chapter Three: Science and Uses 25 Chapter Four: Commerce and Economics 36 Chapter Five: Environment 47 Further Reading 57 Series Glossary 58 Index 60 About the Author 64 Photo Credits 64 Words to Understand: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase the reader’s understanding of the text, while building vocabulary skills. Sidebars: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together additional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Research Projects: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis. Text-Dependent Questions: These questions send the reader back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented there. Series Glossary of Key Terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout the series. Words found here increase the reader’s ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this field. Note to Educator: As publishers, we feel it’s our role to give young adults the tools they need to thrive in a global society. To encourage a more worldly perspective, this book contains both imperial and metric measurements as well as references to a wider global context. We hope to expose the readers to the most common conversions they will come across outside of North America. Key Icons to Look for:

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Copper in North America

Major Copper Deposits Site Mentioned in Text

Davis Strait

C

Hudson Bay

South Brook

A

N

A

D

A

Mount Washington Copper Mine

Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine

Native American copper mines

U N I T E D S T A T E S O F A M E R I C A I E D S O F

Naguatuck River Valley

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Copper Basin

Bingham Canyon Mine

Santa Rita Mountains

Cananea Copper Mine

Tinajas stream

PACIFIC OCEAN

Gulf of Mexico

M E X I C O

0 km 500

1,000

0 miles

500

Caribbean Sea

0 km

500

1,000

1,500

0 miles

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1,000

INTRODUCTION P eople can go their entire lives without seeing a bit of gold. Copper, however, is a different story. Everywhere you look, copper stares you in the face. Bathrooms brim with copper pipes and faucets. If you pull out a fistful of change from your pocket, you’ll probably grab on to a few gleaming copper pennies. Copper pans, copper forks, copper wire, copper roofs. Take a peek—copper is all around you. It is even in your blood.

Copper’s use in plumbing dates back thousands of years, to the Ancient Egyptians, and it is still common today. (Gana123/Dreamstime)

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Copper is one of the most plentiful metals on the planet and the first that humans used in any quantity. It’s so tough and durable when mixed with other metals that shipbuilders once used copper sheets to cover the bottoms of their frigates and schooners, and ancient warriors made weapons with copper blades. Copper conducts heat and electricity very well, which is why electrical wires and circuits are often made from copper. People love copper because they can shape it into anything they want. You can pound it into thin wire, or twist it into curly tubes. Mix copper with other metals, and you have useful alloys, including brass and bronze. It is true that an ounce of gold and silver are worth considerably more than copper, but copper is the workhorse mineral—the metal of the ages. It’s unlikely that a day goes by when you or someone you know doesn’t use copper.

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Chapter One HISTORY

A lexander Graham Bell had a over long distances, yet no one was using his “electrical speech” machine. It’s not that there was something wrong with Bell’s telephone. On the contrary—it worked just fine. The problem lay in the thin, weak copper transmission wires that connected the machines to each other. If the distance between the phones was too great, all callers would hear was static. problem. He had just invented an ingenious way to communicate

alloy: mixture of two or more metals. archeologists: scientists who study ancient cultures by examining their material remains, such as buildings, tools, and other artifacts. inorganic: compound of minerals rather than living material. ore: naturally occurring mineral from which metals can by extracted. smelting: the act of separating metal from rock by melting it at high temperatures. tensile strength: capable of being pulled or stretched without breaking. Words to Understand

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10 Copper

A demonstration of a very early telephone. Phones only became useful once they could be connected to other phones by strong copper wire.

In 1877, Thomas Doolittle, a wire maker from Waterbury, Connecticut, tried to fix the problem. He took soft copper wire and heated it. He then passed the wire through a series of dies (specialized tools that can shape and mold metal) that increased the wire’s tensile strength until it stretched without breaking. Doolittle’s new wire was strong and sturdy, perfect to use as a telephone transmission line. Soon, Doolittle’s wire connected telephones in cities hundreds of miles away. The wire was one of the most stunning developments of the Industrial Age, and along with Bell’s telephone, it helped revolutionize the world. In fact, copper has arguably changed the world more so than any other element. People mold the metal to make bells, weapons, clocks, plumbing fixtures, bolts, and utensils. Electricians run miles of copper wire to electrify skyscrapers. Airplanes, missiles, automobiles, and satellites are packed with copper wire and circuits. People who own swimming pools even use copper in the form of copper sulfate, an inorganic compound that kills algae and bacteria.

11 Chapter One: History

Found on every continent, including Asia, South America, Africa, and Europe, copper is truly a miracle metal.

Copper by the Numbers Atomic number: 29 Atomic symbol: Cu Atomic weight: 63.546 Phase at room temperature: solid Melting point: 1,984˚F (1,085˚C) Boiling point: 4,640˚F (2,560˚C)

The First Copper Mines Our early ancestors understood power of copper very well. Gold and silver might make them rich and powerful, but tools and weapons made of copper could help build a house, kill an animal for dinner, or defeat a foe in battle.

Historians are not sure exactly when humans first discovered copper. Some say humans first began using the metal about 11,000 years ago in the Middle East. Others say a bit earlier. Whatever the year, scientists know that in North America, people began mining copper about 5,000 years ago on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which darts into Lake Superior.

Copper tools, probably used for woodworking, in Ancient Greece, around 2700 to 2200 BCE.

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Copper Goes to Sea In the late 1700s, American shipbuilders began fitting ships with copper bottoms to prevent damage from worms and barnacles, which grew on the sides and bottoms of ships, causing massive amounts of damage. In 1794, the US Naval Act authorized the construction of six American frigates outfitted with copper bottoms. One was the USS Constitution , which is still a commissioned vessel in the US Navy, although it’s chiefly used as a museum .

USS Constitution.

The Native Americans who lived in the region took pure copper from the earth and used it to fashion tools, jewelry, and weapons. Later-day archeologists eventually found mines, smelting pits, and hammering stones that the Indians used to work the copper. These early American mines were not just pits dug into the ground, but sophisticated mining operations in which the Native peoples removed a massive amount of copper, roughly 1,000 to 1,200 tons (910–1,090 metric tons) per pit. Some estimates say the humans who lived on the Upper Peninsula mined 500,000 tons (455,000 metric tons) of copper until 1200 BCE. Archeologists also estimate that the mines produced copper for 1,000 years, although no one knows for sure. All the miners left behind were their tools. Michigan wasn’t the only hotbed of copper mining in early America. In the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys, Native Americans mined and forged copper into many

13 Chapter One: History

things, including fish hooks, harpoons, and weapons. The Adena people, who lived in present-day Ohio, were making copper bracelets by 1100 BCE. Native American tribes in the American Southwest also mined copper.

The Europeans For thousands of years in North America, Native Americans had this wonderful metal all to themselves. That was until the Europeans arrived in the 1500s. Looking chiefly

Copper and brass have long been favorite metals for cooking pots and kettles because they transfer heat effectively.

14 Copper

for gold and silver, the first Europeans who colonized the region also found copper and other metals to exploit. It wasn’t until the early 1700s that copper mining in the North American colonies began in earnest. One of the earliest copper mines was in Connecticut, in what is now East Granby, located halfway between present-day Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts. When the mine had finally given up all its copper, the colonists used the tunnels as Connecticut’s first prison. The site is now known as Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine, and it is a National Historic Landmark. The colonists also established an early copper mine in Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1664. Many of these mines ran dry as the demand for copper and brass, an alloy of copper, increased. Brass forms when copper mixes with zinc. By 1750, the colonial population in America had doubled to nearly a million people, and the demand for copper skyrocketed. As a result, the colonists were forced to import one-fifth of the metal they used from Great Britain.

The Pahaquarry Copper Mine in northern New Jersey was built in the 1740s but permanently closed and abandoned in the 1920s.

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