How do miners know when a mine is tapped out ? Or how they know where to mine in the first place?
In: Earth Science
I worked at a pit mine for several years. We had core samples from the whole site. This means that before the mine was opened, the made a grid over the site where the pit would eventually be dug. Diamond drills were set up at the grid points and drilled down to the eventual maximum depth of the pit. The drill bits leave the middle portion of the material they drill around which is brought back to the surface (these are the cores). The cores are then placed on tables so you can basically see a snapshot of the minerals at every elevation level of the hole.
So once you have cores in the grid you can generate a map of where the ore (and the other material is).
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