Hi there! Have you ever looked at a coin and wondered where the metal in it comes from? Today, we’re going to explore this fascinating question. Let’s dive in!
Coins are made from different metals. For example, a penny is made of copper, and some special coins are made of silver. But where do these metals come from? Let’s find out!
Metals come from the Earth. You might imagine big chunks of metal just lying around underground, but it’s not quite like that. Some metals, like gold, can be found in small pieces in rivers or the ground. People sometimes pan for gold by sifting through sand to find these tiny pieces.
Most metals are hidden inside special rocks called ores. These rocks don’t look like metal at all! For example, iron ore is a type of rock that contains iron, and copper ore contains copper. The metal is mixed throughout the rock, almost like it’s hiding in plain sight.
To get the metal out of these rocks, we need to use a lot of heat. The rocks are put into a special furnace, which is like a super-hot oven. This furnace gets so hot that the metal inside the rock melts and turns into a liquid. It looks like glowing lava!
Once the metal is melted, it can be poured into molds to make all sorts of things, like car parts, paperclips, and bolts. The people who work with these hot metals wear special clothes to protect themselves from the heat.
Isn’t it amazing how metals are hidden in rocks and how we can transform them into useful things? There are so many mysteries in the world, and it’s fun to learn about them. Keep asking questions and stay curious!
Thanks for joining us on this adventure about metals. Until next time, keep exploring and discovering new things!
Sure! Here’s a sanitized version of the transcript:
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[PHONE RINGING] Hi, it’s Doug. I have some coins here. I collect coins. You probably know this one; it’s a one-cent coin, a penny. And this one here is a $20 coin. Different coins are made out of different metals. This one is made out of silver, and this one is made out of copper. Someone named Kadielynn has a question for us about metals. Let’s give her a call now. [PHONE RINGING] Hi Doug. Hi Kadielynn. I was wondering, where does metal come from? That’s a great question. Have you ever thought about where metal comes from? It’s interesting to think about it; metal is all around us. It’s in chairs, desks, buildings, cars, buses, and it’s in coins. But where does metal come from? Do you have any ideas? Now would be a good time to pause the video if you want to stop and discuss. OK, you ready? So where does metal come from? You might have some idea that metal comes from the Earth. That’s true, but what does that mean? Are there chunks of metal in the ground? Is that what these machines are digging out? Well, for some metals, the answer is yes. Gold is an example of a metal that can just be found in the ground. Here you can see someone panning for gold in a river. They’re sifting through the sand in the river and finding little pieces of gold. Now, just finding chunks of metal like this, pure metal from the ground, is really rare. It’s very uncommon. Most metals cannot be found the way that gold can—just waiting in the ground—and that’s because most metal is hidden. It’s hidden inside of rocks. And not just any rocks; metal can only be found in special kinds of rocks, like the ones you see here. Each of these rocks is called an ore. These red ones are iron ore. They contain the metal iron. The blue-green ones are copper ore. They contain copper metal. Here’s a close-up view of some copper ore. Now, when I say that ore contains metal, you might think that means that if we crack the rock open, we’ll find metal inside of it, but it doesn’t quite work like that. You can keep breaking this copper ore up into smaller and smaller pieces, and you’re never going to find copper in there. That’s because the metal is actually part of the ore. It’s in the whole rock all throughout it. It’s almost like the metal is hiding right in front of you. And in order to get the metal out of it, the ore has to be transformed by heat—lots of heat. You have to put the ore in an oven. Now, you wouldn’t be able to do this at home with the oven in your kitchen because your oven doesn’t get nearly hot enough. We’re talking about heating up to thousands of degrees. In order to get metal out of ore, you have to put the ore in a special furnace, a type of oven that can get thousands of degrees hot. It gets so hot that the metal becomes a liquid and separates from the rock. You can see here it’s so hot it’s glowing. It looks like lava. The people who do this work have to wear special clothes to protect them from the heat. So ore is changed. It’s transformed into metal by heating it in a furnace. Then, once the metal is in its liquid form, it can be poured out into different shapes to make everything from bolts and paperclips to car parts. That’s all for this week’s question. Thanks, Kadielynn, for asking it. Now for the next episode, I reached into my question jar and found three questions submitted to me that I’m thinking about answering. When this video’s done playing, you’ll get to vote on one. You can choose from why is dirt brown, why do we need air, or why do we call it the North Pole? So submit your vote when the video’s over. I want to hear from all of you watching. There are mysteries all around us. Stay curious and see you next week.
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