Teacher information

Overview

The profit and cost of gold mining at Mount Morgan aims to develop students’ understandings about the problems faced in making money from the natural resources at Mount Morgan and the importance and impact upon the water in the region. Students will investigate the separation processes used to obtain the gold and other valuable resources of the area and test the impact of these processes on the water supply. They will focus on Gold, how it is found and why it is considered so valuable.

The concepts of sustainable science are featured, together with the key learning area outcomes of getting students to:

• understand the nature of science as a human endeavour, its history, its relationship with other human endeavours and its contribution to society
• use the practices and dispositions of scientific investigations, reflection and analysis to refine knowledge and pose new questions
• use scientific language to communicate effectively
• use decision making processes that include ethical considerations of the impact of science on people and the environment

Activities in this unit are developed around three themes:

• Finding and mining gold at Mount Morgan
• The impact on the Dee River
• The challenges of the future

The pre-visit activities aim to provide an introduction to the types of gold and the techniques of mining these various types and develop student understandings about the reasons Mount Morgan became such an important mining site.

Activities during the visit offer the students the opportunity to see the mine "close-up" and experience the various roles and processes involved in the collection of this resource. The students will have tasks to complete and some will require recording of information but this should be kept to a minimum. A draft recording- sheet is attached but this will need modifying to suit the goals you have for your students. They will need to collect samples of water and can test temperature and record ph levels while in Mount Morgan. They should be encouraged to take some photographs to aid the production of their poster presentation. During the rest of their visit it is important that students see their trip to Mount Morgan as an experience in itself. The students should not take large worksheets. It is vital that the students see how people lived and worked. Students will also travel on the mine tour to appreciate the scale of the mine workings and the way they changed the shape of the mountain.

The post-visit activities draw upon students’ experiences during their visit, including the scientific out water quality testing of the collected water samples, the preparation of a report on the impact of the mine on the environment. They then make either a poster presentation or oral presentation of the challenges facing ensuring sustainable mining in Queensland in the future.

The following activities relate closely to the strands of Science and Society, Energy and Change and Natural and Processed Materials. However the strands of Life and Living and Earth and Beyond are touched upon and could easily be developed further.

Integration into a classroom-teaching module

The profit and cost of gold mining at Mount Morgan can easily be integrated into classroom units. The scientific investigation of the quality of the water in the Dee River and the impact of mining can easily be used in modules on Working Scientifically, Water, Energy Transfer or Properties of Materials. One of the greatest trends in the development of the Science curriculum is towards the introduction of contexts or themes into the delivery of the subjects. Clearly the unit, The Profit and Cost of Gold Mining at Mount Morgan, provides ways the teacher can work effectively within a theme, the following examples provide a range of possible contexts:

• Water
• The future of mining in Australia
• Separating Materials by Physical and Chemical Means
• Using natural resources
• Industry and the Environment

Many of these themes provide excellent opportunities to form industrial or community links and cross-curricular work. A variety of websites are included to suggest some of these possibilities.

The visit itself is an invaluable experience placing the scientific concepts into a real world situation. A good scientist needs to observe the impact of science and technology on both society and the environment and Mount Morgan also provides a wonderful backdrop where the benefits of the gold mine are clearly contrasted with the impact on the environment.

The resources to support these suggested activities utilise external websites. The aim is to provide a rich resource of materials that are able to be adapted to give the focus wanted by the individual school.