Copper is one of the most important metals in today’s society being essential for almost all electrical appliances. However, it’s abundance in the earth is remarkably low and we can economically extract it only where nature has concentrated it. This hands-on workshop demonstrated the extraction of copper from an oxidised ore using equipment and reagents found in every school’s chemistry laboratory.
The experimental work was underscored by a brief Power Point presentation by Dr Nick Welham describing the occurance and processing of copper ores. By the end of the workshop participants had extracted copper metal from ore. Applications of the experiment to the chemistry curriculum were also discussed.
Each participant will received a comprehensive set of notes covering the extraction of copper, a full description of an experiment which can be used with students of almost every grade and some notes on how the experiment relates to the curriculum.
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