Have you ever wondered why so few people get off the elevator on the eighth floor of Mudd? The eighth floor is the Henry Krumb School of Mines, founded in 1864. The School of Mines was the first institution in the United States to offer a mining course of study. The School eventually added other engineering departments for the School of Engineering and Applied Science as well as the pure science departments of Columbia College.
Mining deals with the extraction of minerals from the earth, a subject which most people appear to have an aversion to. After all, how many people like to wear helmets and soiled clothing amid dust? How many people care about how their automobiles, televisions or computers once looked like in raw form? To most of us, rocks are as valuable as the change we get back from buying an item in a "ninety-nine cents" store. But to mining engineers, rocks are the change, the items in the store, and the store itself. This is literally true. Look around and you will realize that all manufactured goods were at some point the various minerals found in the rocks of Mother Earth. We often take mining engineers for granted, without realizing that they are the essential link between earth's natural resources and human beings. As consumers, we praise the final product and rarely think about where it originally came from. For example, a light bulb consists of a glass covering, and metal filament that resists the flow of electricity. Resistance to the current causes dissipation of energy as visible light. Like all manufactured products, light bulbs are created using a combination of knowledge, (i.e. understanding that metal conducts and resists electricity), skilled labor, machinery, and of course, the raw materials. Besides taking mining engineers for granted, we also form misconceptions about them. They are not a group of greedy businesspersons seeking to exploit our natural resources, nor a union of laborers with shovels in their hands. Mining engineers embrace the idea of preserving the environment while maintaining efficiency. Columbia's own School of Mines is currently conducting research in crack formation in rocks, which is important in the development of an unconventional mining technique called "in-situ leaching." Professor Kunsoo Kim, who specializes in rock mechanics, explains: "We have always tried to maintain our edge by technological innovation. We try to extract mineral and energy resources from the earth without disrupting the natural setting. We drill holes, create fractures, and inject chemicals or solutions in one hole. Then we let the chemicals permeate the ore body. Finally, we retrieve the mineral bearing solutions from another hole." The advantage of extracting the minerals in its original place is that it limits the amount of waste rock that mining engineers must mine to obtain the desired minerals.
Furthermore, the cost of blasting, loading, and processing of the ore can be reduced. Since cracks must be created so that the chemicals can dissolve the ore body, the study of rock fracturing will help us to predict and achieve the crack formation we want. While mining engineering's priority has changed from exploiting the earth to improving mining techniques that are beneficial to our environment, the discipline is still as essential to our manufacturing and technological industries as it was in the past. If we strip down a man-made product, what we get are the minerals and metals that only the earth can provide.
The basic ingredients for technology to thrive are the raw materials. The next time you step into a Mudd elevator, think of the various materials needed to build it and think of the people who deliver earth's treasures to us. Think of the eighth floor.