The mining industry consists the extraction of metal gold, silver, iron, copper and zinc. These minerals have many of uses , for example gold and silver are used in jewelry and electronics, iron is used to produce steel, copper is the main component of electrical wiring and zinc is used to coat iron and steel to reduce corrosion and in the making of bronze and brass.
Most metals do not exist in a concentrated form but in small parts in rock called ore. they are untishtinguishable from regular rocks, some ores that contain only a fraction of a percent of metal are mined. so a massive amount of rock must be extracted from the ground in order to obtain an amount of metal. so because metal ores are less common than coal, metal mines can be much larger than coal mines and operate in more extreme environments while coal mines are rarely more than a few hundred feet underground gold mines can be over a mile below the surface.
Metal ore mines are found in both surface and underground depending on where the material is located. Also surface ore mines the use the open-pit mining technique. These mines are huge holes in the ground that are mined by blasting rock from the sides and bottom with explosives then carrying out the broken up material in trucks and repeating the process. Open pit mines can grow to be hundreds of feet deep and several miles wide. Underground mining of ore is less common and it typically only occurring when rich veins of ore are discovered or mineral prices are so high enough to justify the added expense.
but these material that is estracted needs a significant amount of processing to convert it into metal that can be used .