5. Single Mineral

Single Mineral!!!!!

I chose Tantulum as my single mineral. I found it in the Liberal Studies office periodic table display on April 30, 2025. It's commonly found in Austria, Nigeria, and Brazil, as well as other places that have lots of granite and igneous rocks. It's mined from open-pit and underground mines. It's usually extracted from ore minerals like columbite-tantalite, aand is always found in conjuction with niobium. The process of that includes leaching seperation and reduction. It can also be a byproduct from tin mining operations. Though it's pretty rare, it's used in electronic curcits and capacitors which then goes into making TVs, phones, battery chargers, etc. It's useful because it's very durable and hard and has a high melting point which means it has a lot of resistence to heat. Though it's mostly used for electronics, it's used in a lot of other things, too, like jewelry, spacecrafts, superalloys used in tanks and missles. However, mining tantalum has a lot of enviornmental problems as well as poor health and safety.

Fun Facts! - the name Tantulum is from the Greek mythology king named Tantalus - one of its nicknames is "blue gold" - when it was first discovered in 1864, it was thought to be the niobium