Historical And Contemporary Uses Of Copper

Introduction to Copper (57)

Copper is a red-brown metal which is a solid at room temperature and has high boiling and melting points. While humans have been mining copper for a long time and we have used it in many different ways, the mining of copper can be extremely dangerous if an incident were to take place.

Historical and Contemporary uses of Copper (186)

Historical uses

Copper was one of the first metals mined by man (Geoscience, 2015), with its original uses being making early coins and and ornaments. (Uses of Copper, 2018) Certain properties such as its ability to conduct heat, its malleability, and its resistance to corrosion made it a useful material for early humans. (Uses of Copper, 2018) It was used as a substitute of stone, and

(Uses of Copper, 2018) Copper is non-reactive with water, so it has been used in the past to construct water pipes, shown in figure 1. (Fuse School, 2014)

Contemporary uses

Copper has been in high demand due to the increasing growth of electricity and modern technology. (Geoscience, 2015) The more modern uses of copper include copper wiring and plumbing, motors and many other car parts and construction. (Geoscience, 2015) Australia’s source of copper is found in mines, and is then leached from the copper ore to produce a copper solution used to recover the metal. Copper mining incidents (159)

There have been many incidents involved with mining copper, dating back to as early as 1874. These incidents have been caused by many incidents in the mines, including fires and explosions. (The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 2017) One of the most recent and topical copper mining incidents occurred in Tasmania in 2013, where two workers fell 22 meters from a broken timber platform and landed on broken rocks, causing their deaths. After inspection, it was discovered this timber, shown in figure 2, was unsafe and the mine had to plead guilty to failing to comply to their health and safety duty and were fined $225, 000. (ABC News, 2016) To prevent incidents like this from happening again, the government should undertake more safety checks of mines, as this incident wouldn't have occurred if the mine was using safe timber. This incident shows how dangerous mines can be, and how important the health and safety duty is to keeping the workers safe. (ABC News,