Publications

What does boron have to do with baseball, apple pie, motherhood and Chevrolet? Boron minerals and chemicals are used in the tanning of leather baseballs and gloves; in micro-fertilizer to grow apples and in the glass and enamels of bakewares to cook apple pie; in boron detergents for soaking baby clothes and diapers; and in fiberglass parts for the Chevrolet Corvette.

Aluminum is the second most abundant metallic element in Earth’s crust after silicon. Even so, it is a comparatively new industrial metal that has been produced in commercial quantities for little more than 100 years. Aluminum is lightweight, ductile, malleable and corrosion resistant, and is a good conductor of heat and electricity. Weighing about one-third as much as steel or copper...

Natural aggregates, consisting of crushed stone, and sand and gravel, are a major contributor to economic health, and have an amazing variety of uses. Aggregates are among the most abundant mineral resources and are major basic raw materials used by construction, agriculture and other industries that employ complex chemical and metallurgical processes.

The worldwide budget for nonferrous, nonfuel mineral exploration was expected to increase by 58 percent in 2004 from the 2003 budget, according to Metals Economics Group (MEG) of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The increase comes two years after a five-year period of declining spending for mineral exploration (1998 to 2002). Figures suggest a subsequent 27 percent increase in budgeted expenditures...

Cadmium, which was once used almost exclusively for pigments, now has many diverse applications. Cadmium’s low melting point, excellent electrical conductivity and resistance to corrosion make it valuable for many products including batteries, electroplated coatings, stabilizers for plastics, solar cells and nonferrous alloys. Today’s cadmium is primarily used in rechargeable batteries...

Garnet is the general name given to a group of complex silicate minerals, all with isometric crystal structure, similar properties and chemical compositions. Garnet occurs in every color of the spectrum except blue, but it is most commonly red, purple, brown and green. Garnet necklaces dating from the Bronze Age have been found in graves and also among the ornaments adorning the oldest...

Published on an annual basis, this report is the earliest Government publication to furnish estimates covering nonfuel mineral industry data. Data sheets contain information on the domestic industry structure, Government programs, tariffs, and 5-year salient statistics for over 90 individual minerals and materials.

Modern societies are highly dependent upon energy and mineral resources to produce and deliver the material goods and even the services of everyday life. Although societies' dependence upon fossil fuels is evident and understood by much of the population, few people are as well informed about their dependence upon a wide variety of nonfuel minerals. This ignorance may result from two...

From paint to airplanes, titanium is important in a number of applications. Commercial production comes from titanium-bearing ilmenite, rutile and leucoxene (altered ilmenite). These minerals are used to produce titanium dioxide pigment, as well as an assortment of metal and chemical products.

Indium was discovered in Germany in 1863. Although it is a lustrous silver-white color, the finders named the new material for the “indigo” spectral lines the mineral created on the spectrograph. Indium ranks 61st in abundance in Earth’s crust and is about three times more abundant than silver or mercury.

The earliest known use of gypsum as a building material was in Anatolia (in what is now Turkey) around 6000 B.C. It has been found on the interiors of the great pyramids in Egypt, which were erected in about 3700 B.C. Now an average new American home contains more than 7 metric tons of gypsum in the form of more than 6,000 square feet of wallboard.

Ammonia is the principal source of fixed nitrogen. It was produced by 17 companies at 34 plants in the United States during 2003. Fifty-three percent of U.S. ammonia production capacity was centered in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas because of their large reserves of natural gas, the dominant domestic feedstock.