Analysis of Copper-Bearing Rocks and Minerals for Their Metal Content Using Visible Spectroscopy: A First Year Chemistry Laboratory Exploration

General chemistry and introductory chemistry students were presented with a laboratory exploration for the determination of the mass percent of copper in rock and mineral samples. They worked independently in the laboratory, which involved multiple lab (pipetting, preparing standard solutions by quantitative dilution, recording visible spectra with spectrometers) and data analysis skills (graphing and multistep stoichiometry calculations) using spreadsheet software. The results from the malachite mineral samples were used to evaluate the success of the copper extraction and analysis methods. Students were tasked with evaluating the economic viability of a "mining site" using their analysis of the malachite bearing rock samples. They worked with the entire class data set to make this evaluation. Students' lab reports and spreadsheets (submitted electronically) were evaluated using a grading rubric. Their engagement and enthusiasm for this exploration was high as they were eager to solve this real-life problem scenario that would be tackled by a professional chemist.