What is an ore exactly? Can anyone provide a definition of what an ore is?

Question

I would like to know what exactly an ore is. Also what is the advantage of making iron tools or Iron implements and what civilization discovered Iron ore and approximatley when it happened. Thank you

Answer 1

Ore is any type of mineral that give you a metal.

Iron was discovered between 1,800 and 1,200 BC depending on where you are in the world.

Early iron was weaker and more brittle than bronze but by 1,200 the methods of making steel had been discovered almost everywhere.

Steel with its controlled content of carbon and silicone was harder tougher and stronger than iron or bronze.

It is hard to explain metallurgy, but the early iron was mostly from bog iron ore.

It was smelted by charcoal fires and hammered to get it to stick together.

It had a lot of carbon and silicon (sand slag) in it plus a lot of other imporities like manganese, hydrogen, magnesium, ans those are just a few of the impurities.

The shift to steel involved being able to get it hot enough to actually become molten and nutn off the ompurities or making them come out as slag.

Then came the development of forging which let them purify it more by hammering lthe slag out of it, as well as shape it better.

Answer 2

ore

a naturally occurring mineral from which particular constituents, especially metals, can be profitably extracted

Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation.

like lead from galena

aluminum from Bauxite

Answer 3

There are two answers:

- An ore is a mineral, or mix of minerals, that contains an economically valuable material (usually a metal or mix of metals) that can be recovered from the ore.

- Therefore, and ore has to pe present in sufficient quantities, and in a sufficientkly high concentration, to make it economically feasible to mine and treat to recover the valuable material.

Just because a mineral contains a metal doesn't mean that it is an ore.  Clay, for instance, contains a high proportion of aluminium; but is not economically feasible to extract aluminium from clay, so it is not considered an ore of aluminium (although it may be valuable for other purposes).