The Elements Unearthed

Introducing the STEM-Arts Alliance

January 1, 2014 by davidvblack

With the beginning of the 2013-14 school year, I’m pleased to announce the start of a new program in my classes at Walden School of Liberal Arts. I call it the STEM-Arts Alliance, and it’s an attempt to bring artistic expression and creativity into my STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) courses.

Receiving the award from CenturyLink Foundation.

I have several reasons for doing this. First, I hope to broaden our students’ participation in upper-level science and technology courses. Given the size of our school, we could have more students taking courses such as chemistry, physics, astronomy, anatomy, and environmental science. We are a public charter school with a liberal arts emphasis, which means we get a high percentage of creative, passionate, out-of-the-box-thinking students. We need people like this to choose careers (or at least become more literate) in the sciences. My solution is to broaden the appeal of our science and technology courses by integrating the students’ strengths and interests. This is not to say I’m making my courses any less academic; it just means we’re using the arts as a continuing theme, by looking at the art of science, the science of art, and the history of both.

Second, I happen to love drawing and painting and rarely have time to do it. My artistic passion is somewhat satisfied by 3D animation and video production projects, but there’s just something about holding a paintbrush or an ink pen and seeing a project emerge from paper. I’ve been pulled in four different directions all my life; I seem to keep swinging between science, media design, history, and fine art. So I’m creating lesson plans and projects that incorporate all four of these areas, projects that are based around my own passions.

Award letter for the ING Unsung Heroes Award. It’s always a good day when you receive one of these!

Third, I hope to enhance the stories of science we’re telling by bringing my students’ artistic skills to bear on science topics. When I did some line drawings of Greek matter theorists (such as Thales, Parmenides, etc.) I found that they were frequently downloaded. Apparently, people are tired of finding only the few standard photos showing busts of Aristotle and his colleagues in some museum. Why not put myself (and my students) to work, creating new images in the cause of science education and fine art? I soon hope to complete the Greek Matter Theories videos I began four years ago, and I need more materials and images. Now I can do two things at once. I can draw illustrations of Aristotle or Democritus for the Greek videos while simultaneously teaching the chemistry of ink or paint pigments.

Fourth, our school is building up to become an International Baccalaureate (IB) school with a Middle Years Programme starting this year and growing to encompass 7-10 grades, with an additional Diploma Programme in our upper grades. The chemistry and technology courses are very much based on design projects and inquiry experiments while maintaining high academic standards. This is very much the model I have been working toward anyway, and my STEM-Arts Alliance should help my students transition into the IB chemistry and technology classes.

But to successfully implement my ideas, I needed funds and so I’ve been applying to every grant I can find. During this spring, I applied for five different programs, grants, or competitions, with three being due within two days of each other. True, it was made easier because all my proposals were similar, hoping that some would succeed. And they did! Two grants have come in. The first was $1250 from the CenturyLink Foundation. I received one of those large fake checks in May. I began purchasing equipment and supplies during the summer, including a GoPro camera, an audio recorder, a green screen, and a digitizing Bamboo tablet. These technologies will add to our ability to record video and audio, create digital images, and document what we’re doing in chemistry and astronomy in our two blog sites. We also purchased a new LEGO Mindstorms EV3 kit so we could start an afterschool robotics club. Here is a link to the CenturyLink Award: http://www.centurylink.com/static/Pages/AboutUs/Community/Foundation/teachers.html.

Receiving the award from Steve Platt of ING Foundation.

My second success was $2000 for the ING Unsung Heroes Award. They provide two such awards per state, and I thought I had a pretty good chance of winning one. I’ve purchased a new color laser printer (so much better than using the ink jet) as well as chemicals and supplies for the various lessons and projects we’ll be doing this year. I received a second large fake check from Steve Platt of ING this fall, as well as a nice plaque. I am still purchasing materials through this grant. Here is a link to the awards page in case you want to apply yourself: http://ing.us/about-ing/responsibility/childrens-education/ing-unsung-heroes.

So far my students have worked on a number of different projects in several different classes and at Timp Lodge. They’ve accomplished the following:
1. We set up a summer media design class that culminated in organizing the video clips and recording green screen narration for the SOFIA video I’m putting together.
2. We made tie-dye shirts at Timp Lodge.
3. We made marbled paper using dilute oil paints floated on water (also at Timp Lodge). 4. Students edited the SOFIA videos and built 3D objects from SOFIA’s interior in the middle school Creative Computing classes.
5. Students created iron-gall ink in chemistry and used it to draw pen and ink illustrations of science history concepts.
6. We started the robotics club after school, and students have built a rover capable of picking up small objects and moving them to new locations.
7. Students turned periodic properties of the elements into 3D models.
8. They built paper Christmas tree ornaments representing chemical elements.
9. Students created homemade watercolor pigments and used them to make paintings of science history.
10. They wrote and narrated podcast scripts on astrobiology topics.

I’ll report in more detail on each of these in future posts. It seems that we’re still just getting started, but in reality we’ve been very busy and very successful already. All projects have a fine arts component, a technology component (all paintings are scanned and cleaned up in Photoshop), and a history component. We are literally creating modern versions of old formulas used in making art for thousands of years. And it feels great to have all my passions pulling in the same direction.

Most of these activities have been in chemistry class. I am starting there as an initial run through, testing the recipes I’ve found online so that I can perfect the processes for future classes. The chemistry students have done exceptionally, and they’ve proven to have excellent art skills on top of learning chemistry and experimenting with different formulas. I hope to set up a dedicated Science and Art class during our Intersession that will incorporate all these activities and hopefully more besides. I’ve written another grant to the Moss Foundation just to get an electric kiln to do Raku pottery. So far I haven’t received word, but should soon. I might do a second class for making junk sculpture out of found objects. It will be a combination of materials science, design, and engineering.

I’m having a lot of fun researching and designing these projects, and I hope you’ll have fun reading about them and trying them out yourselves.

Posted in Weekly Post | Tagged art and science, century link foundation grant, ing unsung heroes award, iron gall ink, marbled paper, raku pottery, science literacy, science of art, steam education, stem education, watercolor pigments | Leave a Comment »

Material Science Workshop

December 31, 2013 by davidvblack

My summer this year was mostly taken up with astronomy related activities. I flew on SOFIA (see my other blog: spacedoutclass.com) and took an astrobiology workshop at the Great Salt Lake to study extremophiles in June, then spent most of July writing up my experiences and archiving the SOFIA video clips. But during the first week in August, I did return to chemistry and the elements as I participated in a materials science workshop offered by ASM, the materials science association of America (yes, I know, the acronym doesn’t fit. It used to be the American Society of Metallurgists, but has grown to include all material sciences, so now it’s just ASM International). I had heard of these workshops before, and this is the first time they’ve been offered in Utah. When the announcement went out from the Utah State Office of Education, I signed up immediately.

Weber State University campus seen from the science building

The workshop was held at Weber State University in Ogden. I couldn’t attend the one at BYU because I was in Palmdale flying on SOFIA that week. Even though it was a bit of a drive to go up to Ogden for five days, I did manage to carpool the last three days with two other teachers from Utah Valley, and we had some good conversations while driving up and back. We met at the Park and Ride at Thanksgiving Point each morning. One was a middle school science teacher in Alpine, the other a Technology teacher at the Nebo Learning Center in Springville. Other teachers in the workshop ranged from chemistry teachers (and a WSU chemistry professor) to industrial arts teachers doing Project Lead the Way. Getting to know the other teachers is always a highlight of attending these workshops.

Teachers in the ASM Materials Science workshop at WSU

The course was taught by Becky Heckman, who teaches materials science courses at an International Baccalaureate school in Princeton, Ohio outside Cincinnati; and by David McGibney, a teacher from Sammimish, Washington. He was also a finalist in the original Teacher in Space program. A third teacher, Chris Miedema, from Ottawa, Canada also helped out as an ASM trainee teacher. All three have been through these workshops before and have received additional training to present them, traveling to several locations each summer for a week at a time.

Weber State University chemistry lab, with Dr. Donaldson and his wife.

The course was divided up into sections by the types of materials, with an overview on Monday. We looked at the properties of metals, ceramics, glass, composites, and polymers and alternated our time between in-class discussions and demonstrations and lab activities. We were in the current WSU science building (a new one is being built) and used the chemistry lab upstairs. Some of the labs I’ve done before, such as the activity series of the elements, but we did them in new ways or from different perspectives. Most of the labs will be directly useful in my chemistry class this year. A few use equipment that will require some grants to get, such as a small kiln for raku pottery that runs about $800. They provided some starter materials, such as a bag of sodium polyacrylate and some metal electrode kits, that were given by various chemical companies.

Testing the Reactivity of Metals in Copper Sulfate Solution.

Workshop Highlights:

Activity Series with Copper: We used plastic bottle performs instead of test tubes to test various metals in a solution of copper sulfate, then observed the differences in reactivity. This is a variation of the Activity Series of Metals lab, but is presented as an excellent inquiry/discovery lab. I’ll use this during my second semester as we talk about reactivity and reaction types, leading into my lab on copper compounds.

Borax glass beads. The green beads are on nichrome wire, the blue beads on copper wire.

Borax Glass Beads: We had two types of wire, nichrome and copper, bent into small loops. We heated up the loops in a torch flame, then dipped them into a cup with borax powder, then heated it again, until a bead of vitrified borax formed in the loop. The nichrome bead was green, the copper wire bead was blue. It took some practice not to get too much borax on the loop, so that it didn’t drip into the torch burner.

Metal Activities. From Bottom clockwise: A penny squished through a stretching machine, tin and bismuth alloy buttons, tin splotches and shreaking tin, pennies turned to “silver” and “gold.”

The Alchemist’s Dream: We did a variation on the old “turning copper into gold” lab that didn’t require pre-1982 pennies (which were made of pure copper). This one uses a solution of zinc powder and sodium hydroxide, just like the other version, but deposits the zinc onto the copper using electroplating. A zinc electrode is in the solution is attached to the positive lead, and the penny is placed inside a plastic spoon with holes in it and touched with a copper wire attached to the negative lead. The zinc appears instantly. It is less dangerous than heating up the zinc-lye solution, and the zinc layer is more even, producing a better-looking golden penny when heated up on a hot plate. I’ve already done this lab in my chemistry class this year with excellent results.

Playing with starch and water solution at the ASM camp.

Thixatropic vs. Dilatant Solutions: We did the old cornstarch and water oobleck lab (outside, as this is very messy) but looked at it from the perspective of thixatropic (adding shear force or shaking makes the solution less viscous, such as shaking a catsup bottle) versus dilatant (pronounced “die-laa-tant”), where shear forces make the solution more rigid, such as the starch-water solution. These are both examples of non-Newtonian fluids.

Making sulfur allotropes. We did this outside because of the smell.

Sulfur Allotropes: Heating sulfur flowers until it turns orange, then carefully pouring into water produces a rubbery form of sulfur. Depending on the temperature and how quickly it is heated, sulfur has several allotropes. We also produced sulfur crystals.

Crystal Bead Boards: Taking a DVD case and filling with small plastic beads, then taping it together to make a single layer. These beads can be shaken to illustrate crystal lattices and imperfections, such as linear cleavage planes, vacancies, etc. Mixing two colors of beads or even two sizes of beads can show substitutional and interstitial alloy structures.

Sir Ken Robinson TED Talk: A very provocative and inspirational talk on the nature of learning and education that all teachers should watch (all students for that matter). Here’s the link: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html.

Annealing, Quenching, and Tempering: We heated bobby pins and paper clips (having different levels of carbon in the steel) and tested how easy it was to break them after they had been annealed, quenched, and tempered. Then we learned the differences in crystal structure. A good introductory discovery lab, with inquiry, that I had never seen before.

Tin splotches, made by dripping melted tin onto a steel plate.

Tin and Bismuth Alloys: We made a series of buttons of different percentages of tin and bismuth metals melted together. We then tested their melting points to see where the eulectic point (alloy with lowest melting point) was. This was at about 58% bismuth to tin.

Steel Wool in Vinegar: We placed steel wool in a small Erlenmeyer flask with vinegar and salt water, then placed a balloon over the mouth of the flask. We measured the temperature of the solution every ten minutes with a laser thermometer (I had never seen these before – pretty slick!) We were asked to predict what would happen with the balloon – would it inflate or deflate? We also did a corrosion lab with steel wool in water, salt water, hydrogen peroxide, and a combination and compared reaction rates.

Polyurethane foam mushrooms colored with food coloring.

Thomas Thwaites video: A Welsh man received a grant to see if he could build a toaster from scratch, based on a quote from Mostly Harmless, the fifth book in the Hitchhikers series by Douglas Adams. Arthur Dent, who seems to have trouble hanging onto his towel, has landed on a primitive world where he assumes he will soon be in charge due to his advanced 20th century scientific knowledge. He soon discovers, however, that he doesn’t even have the skills necessary to build his own toaster. He can barely manage to make a passable sandwich. Thwaites decided to put the idea to the test; he took apart a toaster and catalogued the parts, then collected all the raw materials needed to build one himself. He had to melt the metal (which he got at an iron mine), create the plastic (he used potato starch, but snails ate it, and British Petroleum wouldn’t give him a jug of crude oil. He finally had to “mine” the plastic from a garbage dump), and he eventually got a crude toaster that lasted a few seconds before burning out. Here is the link to that video: http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch.html.

Plastics Labs: We made polyurethane foam plastic, both rigid and flexible. We also made large clothespins, shrinky dinks (plastic cups painted with Sharpie pens, then melted in a toaster oven), a latex ball (although mine looked like a brain more than a ball), and a homemade Styrofoam shape from a mold and polystyrene pellets.

Shrinky dinks. The disk on the left was a #6 recyclable plastic cup colored by Sharpie permanent markers, then heated in a toaster oven. It shrank down to its original size before plastic forming.

Making Models of Composites: We created “diving boards” out of foamcore wrapped with tape, then tested their elasticity and Young’s Modulus. We also made “hockey pucks” from cement mixed with plastic Easter grass as a reinforcer, then dropped the pucks from different heights to compare reinforced vs. non-reinforced concrete. The reinforced cement held up to stresses and did not shatter as the non-reinforced cement did.

Bending a large pipe at the CBI plant. The glowing band is where the pipe is heated by electric current induction, then bent by the machine at right. Water is sprayed on the already bent portion to prevent over bending.

Tour of CBI Pipe Bending Plant: On Thursday, we carpooled over to a subsidiary of CBI Pipe and Supply in west Ogden that bends large pipes for oil or gas pipelines. The pipes are manufactured straight, but there are times when pipelines have to bend, so this company does the bends. The pipes are extruded and heated using electrical current at a very thin line as a large machine pulls the pipes around at a specific angle. Except for the thin band of heated pipe, the rest is cooled with a water jet. We were shown all through the plant, including how the pipes are tested for strength and shear stress in a lab, how they are annealed in an oven, and how they are painted. Some of the pipes we saw being bent were four feet in diameter.

Testing metal samples from the original pipes to determine strength, elasticity, etc.

Raku Pottery: This was the most complex thing we did, but also the most interesting from a chemistry perspective. We used a special type of ceramic clay, with higher sand content than usual, to shape small pinch pots. A small 120 volt electric kiln was purchased for this workshop, and the pots were fired in it during the first two days. Then we put glazes made of metal oxides onto the bisque ware and fired it to 900°. On Friday, as our final activity, we took the pots out of the kiln while still hot and placed them into new paint cans filled with shredded newspaper. As the pots hit the paper, it burst into flames. The lid was then placed on the paint can to smother the flames. As the oxygen in the can is used up, the flames pull oxygen away from the metal oxide glaze, reducing it back to a metal. The pots come out with metallic shines. I experimented with various glazes and layering colors on top of each other. My best results were with red copper oxide, tin oxide, and silver oxide glazes. Chromium oxide stayed green and cobalt oxide stayed blue. Tin started pink but turned silvery. Copper went from pinkish to coppery metal, and silver from bluish green to silver-white.

Removing the glowing red Raku pots from the kiln.

These were just a few of the things we did over five days. The workshop has already been extremely useful for me, and I plan to incorporate more of the ideas and activities into my other courses this coming semester. We received a large booklet with lesson plans as well as a DVD. Perhaps I will even propose a semester-long materials science course for next year at Walden School. We ended the workshop on Friday with a nice banquet at the student union building at WSU and were addressed by a colonel in the Air Force at Hill Air Force Base, one of the cosponsors of this workshop.

Some of the finished Raku pots. Mine is on the right. It’s not as nice as others because I experimented with layering glaze colors.

Raku pot using copper oxide glaze, which reduced to a copper metal shine.

Teachers at the ASM workshop banquet, Friday, August 9, 2013.

Posted in Weekly Post | Tagged activity series, annealing, asm, ceramics, composites, crystal structure, glass, hill air force base, materials science, metallurgy, metals, polymers, quenching, raku pottery, reduction reaction, tempering, weber state university | Leave a Comment »

Tintic Soil Study Results and Conclusions

December 29, 2013 by davidvblack

Main waste rock dump at the Tintic Standard Mine.

In this post, we will report results and draw conclusions for our study of soil contamination in the Tintic Mining District. This study was supported by a grant from the American Chemical Society.

Students from Walden School of Liberal Arts brought back 42 samples of soils from the area in and around Eureka, Utah. Our purpose was to test for heavy metal contamination, especially lead. Previous tests done by the Utah Department of Health and the EPA showed lead contamination to be widespread throughout the town, due to the presence of historic concentration plants in the town and the use of mine waste rock as fill in many lots. Since there are mine dumps on the hillsides south of town, rain runoff also brought lead contamination into the residential areas.

Western side of the Swansea Consolidated mine dump near SIlver City.

These tests led the EPA to declare the town a Superfund project and spend $26 million to replace soils in some areas of town (but not all). They also placed limestone riprap over the mine dumps to prevent further runoff. The process took ten years and completely changed the look of the town, damaging or destroying several historic landmarks along the way, such as the headframes for the Eureka Hill and Gemini mines. Two landmarks, the Bullion Beck headframe and the Shea building, were restored. The rest have been left in ruins.

Middle section of the Swansea Consolidated mine dump near Silver City.

All of the tests we conducted were put into numerical form and entered into a spreadsheet so that we could compare the results. We used an ALTA II reflectance spectrometer to measure reflected light at eleven wavelengths, including four infrared wavelengths. We also tested the pH of the samples using several methods, including universal test strips, a garden soil test kit, and a pH meter. We tested for lead using a sodium rhodizonate solution, which changes from orange-red to pink in the presence of lead in neutral soils and to green or blue in the presence of lead in acidic soils. Please see our previous post for details on these tests. Since the rhodizonate test was qualitative, we assigned numbers depending on the color of the final solution so that some comparison could be made.

For the samples, we selected ten areas inside the town of Eureka, including some where the soil has been replaced and others where the soil is original. We tried to pick areas that were representative of the town as a whole. At each site, we sampled the surface soil and soil about six inches below the surface. We also sampled 12 sites outside of town, including areas away from town as controls and areas on or near exposed mine dumps, such as those from the Tintic Standard, Swansea Consolidated, and Tesora mines. We also took samples from gullies or washes downstream from mining areas and dumps, and from an exposed ore body (which has not been mined or processed) at a road cut along U.S. Highway 6.

Test Results:

Chart 1: Comparing Different pH Tests of Soil Samples. The readings taken with our portable pH meter provide the most consistent results (and can be done easiest in the field).

As you can see from Chart 1 shown here, of the different methods we used to determine the soil pH, the pH meter was the most sensitive and consistently accurate. It was also easiest to use. It showed that most of the samples, were slightly acidic (between 6 and 7), but the samples taken from mine dumps and the areas immediately downstream were extremely acidic; in fact, some samples had a pH too low for our meter to read, which had a low limit of 2.5. Although not shown on this chart, the samples taken inside Eureka on our fourth collection trip all showed pHs near neutral (6 – 7).

Our lead test showed no discernable lead inside Eureka, even in soils that had not been replaced by the EPA. This is probably because our test is not sensitive enough for low lead levels. It becomes hard to distinguish the original color of the rhodizonate from the natural color of the soil unless there is enough lead present to create an obvious color change. In Chart 2, low levels of lead correspond very well with neutral pH soils.

Chart 2: Comparing Soil pH with Lead Levels. The lower the pH (more acidic) the soil samples were, the more lead was present with a correlation coefficient of rho = -0.876.

The most interesting result of our study was to compare pH with lead levels. Chart 2 shows that the highest lead levels were found on or immediately downstream from mine dumps, which correlated very well with low pH levels with a correlation coefficient of rho = -0.876. Mine dump soils had high lead content and were highly acidic. Of course, this doesn’t imply causality: the high acid doesn’t cause lead, and the high lead probably doesn’t cause the acidity, but if one is present, so is the other.

Chart 3: Comparing Soils at Mine Dumps with Healthy Soil Using the ALTA II Reflectance Spectrometer. Healthier
soils were darker and richer in humus, whereas mine dump soils were pale and yellowish.

In Chart 3, the reflectance spectrometer tests were inconclusive as far as detecting a signature for lead. We compared the results shown with samples of pure lead, pure galena (lead sulfide), and silver-lead ore. There were no obvious wavelengths that gave a definitive fingerprint for only lead.

The one useful result of the spectrometer tests was to confirm the overall health of the soil samples; those with lower percent reflectance overall were darker, richer, more healthy soils with more plant life growing. The lighter soils had less plant life and higher overall reflectances. The soils at mine dumps were yellowish to light purplish due to the presence of sulfur compounds, and these also had no plant life, lower pH, and higher lead.

Chart 4: Comparing the Levels of Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium in Soil Samples. The nitrogen and phosphorus tests gave no predictable results, whereas the potassium test showed higher levels of potassium in mine dump soils with high lead content (rho = .687).

Chart 4 shows the tests we conducted on soil nutrients. The nitrogen and phosphorus tests were inconclusive, and are probably due to the poor quality of the garden test kit we used. The potash (potassium) test did show higher potassium in the mine dump soils where lead levels were also highest, although the correlation was only moderate (rho = 0.687).

Conclusions:

A visual inspection of the mine dumps outside of Eureka, Utah in the Tintic Mining District shows that the waste rock and soils are highly contaminated. No plants grow on the dumps or in the gullies immediately below them. They are stained a bright yellowish-orange, and soils in the nearby gullies have layers of red, yellow, and even green. Overall, they are lighter and less rich than nearby soils with plant life. Our tests show that these mine dump soils are acidic and have high levels of lead contamination.

Similar mine dumps were located at the west end of town (around the Gemini and Bullion Beck headframes) and south of town (Chief Consolidated and Eagle and Bluebell mines). If the same pattern of contamination occurred there as what we found in the Swansea, Tesora, and Tintic Standard dumps, then it is likely that the soils downstream in the residential areas of town were also contaminated by lead and sulfur compounds. We did not find evidence of this in our tests of original soils inside town, but our test was not sensitive enough to find the lowest levels of lead. Soil pH throughout the town was slightly acidic, which may indicate sulfur or even lead content. We were not able to get the data from the original EPA tests.

Soil discoloration in the wash west of the main Swansea mine dump at Silver City.

Both pH and potassium content appear to be well correlated with lead content, with pH having a particularly high negative correlation (-0.876). Perhaps pH can be used as a marker, since it is easily measured. Where lead is suspected, a pH reading showing high acidity would indicate a strong possibility of lead. It would be interesting to see if the two measurements decouple as one travels further downstream from the mine dumps along washes and gullies. Do the lead and the acid travel the same distances?

Soil layers showing different types of contamination, in the middle wash downstream from the Swansea mine dump.

Much remains to be tested. We have some additional grant funds that we will use to send four samples to an outside lab for detailed element analysis. I also hope to take all our samples to a local university and use an X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer or Raman Spectrometer to get an accurate and precise readout of the lead levels and other heavy metal content. We need to determine the amount of sulfur compounds in the soils, and how that correlates with pH. We also need to pass our samples through a soil sieve and measure the relative sizes of particles and the amount of humus in each. We should test the mine dump soils to see if plants will grow in them compared to the other samples. Finally, we need to return to the site and collect more samples of other mine dumps, as well as the soils around and downstream from the dumps we’ve already tested. We need to determine how far the lead contamination and acidity travel down the washes and gullies and the extent to which the slope of the land affects this.

As with any field research study, it’s hard to keep all the variables constant. We’ve been careful and consistent with our tests, recording each location and using controlled testing conditions in the lab. But there are factors we can’t control. It could be that the low plant life on the dumps is simply because this is a desert, and plant life takes time to get established after soils are disturbed. The dumps were all dug up and the best materials were transferred to a leaching pile nearby in the 1980s. 30 years is not enough time for climax vegetation of sagebrush and juniper trees, but is enough time for grasses and low brush to grow. In general, soils in the area are poor in nutrients except where higher levels of water (such as in washes or gullies) allow more plants to grow and decay into better humus.

Staining on the asphalt where water draining off of the Swansea mine dump runs over the road near Silver City.

Posted in Weekly Post | Tagged american chemical society, epa, eureka utah, field study, hach grant, lead contamination, lead ore, mine dump, silver mining, soil analysis, soil pH, superfund project, tintic mining district, waste rock | Leave a Comment »

Testing Tintic Soil Samples

November 4, 2013 by davidvblack

Some of the soil samples from the Tintic Mining District

Although it’s been over six months since we conducted these experiments, I want to report on what we did before moving on to other topics so that these blog posts will be in the right order. So much has happened doing chemistry that I’ve fallen behind on reporting and writing about chemistry and the elements.

Chemistry students test chemicals with the ALTA II reflectance spectrometer

During our Intersession class in March, we visited the Tintic Mining District three times in addition to our visit the previous fall. This made four collection trips altogether, and we got 42 samples from over 20 locations. Some of these were from areas inside the town of Eureka, some were outside in areas with heavy mining, such as on or around mine dumps, and some were control samples where no mining has occurred. Our goal was to test these samples for lead and other metal contaminants as well as pH.

Sean, Jem, Indi, and Jeffrey add water to soil samples

We did this in several ways. First, we took a field pH meter with us to test the soils as we collected the samples. Since most were gathered in March, the ground was damp and the pH meter worked well. The areas around mine dumps showed extremely low pHs (the meter pegged at about 2.5, so the samples were lower still). They also showed the most discoloration, ranging from yellow to purplish colors. These sites also had little or no vegetation.

Chemicals and minerals tested by the chemistry students using an ALTA II reflectance spectrometer

Measuring pH using universal test strips

Even though the field pH meter worked well, we weren’t sure if it was consistent or reliable given that the soil samples had different amounts of moisture. When we took the samples back to our chemistry lab, we took them out of the Ziploc bags they were in and placed them onto paper plates to dry for several days. Students measured 10.0 g of each and added 25 mL of distilled water, stirring the samples to mix the soil with the water as much as possible. Then we tested each with the pH meter, universal pH test strips, and more specific test strips. We also used a garden soil nutrient test kit that included a pH test where a pill was emptied into the wet sample and color read off of a chart. The various results were set up on the whiteboard as a table, then my student Jem set up a spreadsheet to record and chart all the samples to compare which pH test method was most sensitive and accurate.

Testing for lead with sodium rhodinzonate. The blue color of the second to last sample indicates both lead and acid.

Another test was to see how much lead was in the samples. Our technique was to use a kit for testing lead in soils using a solution of sodium rhodizonate, which turns from reddish orange to pink in a control solution of lead nitrate. Our samples brought back from our first and second collect trips were tested by filtering out the sediment from the soil mixed with water, then taking the filtrate and adding the rhodizonate solution. Most of the solutions stayed orange, but one turned purplish blue, not pink. It was the sample taken from the Tesora mine dump. This was puzzling until one of my students, Sean, looked up the rhodizonate test and found that it does turn purple-blue if the sample is acidic. When testing its pH, we found it was highly acidic with a pH of 3.0.

Results of rhodizonate test, with colors ranging from orange (no lead) through yellow (moderate lead) to green and blue (high lead). The test was qualitative, not quantitative.

We began to see there was a correlation between low pH and lead content. As we repeated the test with other samples, we refined our techniques and came up with a color gauge that provided a rough quantitative scale for the amount of lead present. Most samples, including all from inside town, had a pH of 6.5-7.0 and the rhodizonate stayed orange. Where the pH was a little lower (6.0-6.5 and 5.0-6.0), such as in areas downstream for mine dumps, the rhodizonate turned orange-yellow or yellow. A pH of 4.0 – 5.0 showed a rhodizonate test of light green. A pH lower than 4 showed a test of blue. The correlations between the amount of lead and the acidity of the soil were very strong. We set up a scale of orange equals no to very little lead, yellow a small amount of lead, green a larger amount, and blue the largest amount with numbers 0 to 4. Unfortunately, the rhodizonate test is not specific enough to show actual quantities of lead, and we have no way of knowing if a number 4 (blue) test has twice as much lead as a number 2 (yellow) test. That will have to wait for x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy or some other technique.

Control tests using the sodium rhodizonate solution (on the right). The second to the right shows pink color when the test solution is added to a neutral solution of lead nitrate. It turns purple (second from left) in an acidic solution that contains lead. It produces a white precipitate in a solution basic solution of lead. In the soil samples, lead in acidic soil produced a blue color. When a base was added, a black precipitate formed. All samples with lead present were also highly acidic.

Control tests for lead using the sodium rhodizonate solution (on the right). The second to the right shows pink color when the test solution is added to a neutral solution of lead nitrate. It turns purple (second from left) in an acidic solution that contains lead. It produces a white precipitate in a basic solution of lead. In the soil samples, lead in acidic soil produced a blue color. When a base was added, a black precipitate formed. All samples with lead present were also highly acidic.

We also tested for soil nutrients, including phosphate, nitrate, and potassium. The only correlation was that the soils with higher levels of lead had higher potassium levels overall, but the correlation wasn’t completely certain.

Sean tests for nitrogen in the samples

I had seen an interesting device demonstrated at a workshop for the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars where we used reflectance spectroscopy to analyze rock samples representing Martian rock analogs. The ALTA II device uses 11 LED lights on the bottom to shine off of a rock or mineral sample, then a detector shows the relative reflectance of each wavelength, ranging from blue through red to four frequencies of infrared LEDs. Using a white paper and a black paper as controls, the percent of reflected light can be determined and charted. Before Intersession began, I had the chemistry students use the ALTA on a series of chemicals. Some were white but of different substances, some were pure elements, such as copper, tin, lead, iron, and sulfur. Others were alloys such as bronze or compounds such as copper sulfate or minerals such as iron pyrite. I wanted to see if the alloys were an average between the pure elements that made them up, and to see if the infrared reflectance was different even though the visible colors of substances were white.

Reflectance spectrometer readings for various chemicals and minerals. There are 11 wavelengths read for each sample, which are compared to the values for white and black to get a percent reflectance.

We also used the ALTA on each of the soil samples, and the results were fairly predictable in that the richer, loamier soils had lower reflectance at all frequencies (they are darker). The more mineralized and contaminated soils were lighter (more yellowish overall) and high reflectance. Yet the yellow soil didn’t necessarily have higher yellow reflectance – it might have higher green and red, which were combining to make yellow. This spectrometer isn’t specific enough to really give detailed reflection spectrums, which would show spikes at specific frequencies for lead or other elements.

Recording data for the reflectance spectrometer on the Tintic soil samples.

Doing 11 wavelengths of light for 42 samples created a huge data table. We also had all the nutrient, pH, and lead data. Jem set it all up in a massive spreadsheet. Our ten-day class finished before we had the chance to analyze the samples from our final collection trip, so another student, Jeffrey, continued to work on the samples on his own time. By the end of the school year the results were all finalized. I’ll talk about those results in my next post.

Jem enters all the data into a spreadsheet.

Posted in Weekly Post | Tagged ALTA spectrometer, authentic data, data analysis, environmental science, field study, lead contamination, reflectance spectrometry, sodium rhodizonate, soil nutrient testing, soil test, testing soil pH, tintic mining district | Leave a Comment »

Tintic Soil Study: Sample Collection Trip 4

August 31, 2013 by davidvblack

Old car behind the Tintic Mining Museum in Eureka, Utah.

During our Intersession period between third and fourth terms, I taught a class that would help complete our study of lead contamination in the Tintic Mining District around Eureka, Utah for our American Chemical Society Hach grant. We had already visited the area three times to collect samples in the various mine dumps around the area, but we needed one more trip to collect samples from inside the town of Eureka itself. We traveled down for this last trip on Thursday, March 14, 2013. I had three students with me from Walden School: Jeffrey, Indie, and Aaron.

Aaron, Jeffrey, and Indie collecting samples of a hydrothermal vein at a road cut on Highway 6.

We had scoped out the town and decided to collect at ten locations in the town and at least one location further southwest outside the entire district as controls. The town was cleaned up by the EPA as a superfund project, and $26 million was spent to dig up contaminated topsoil in sensitive areas, such as playgrounds, the baseball field, and lawns at the high school. Other areas have been covered with limestone fragments, or rip-rap, dug up at a quarry about five miles outside town and supposedly beyond the contaminated zone. Still other areas in town have had plastic netting laid over the ground, supposedly to prevent erosion from washing contamination back into the town. And there are many areas that have not been touched, with climax vegetation (mostly sagebrush and some juniper trees) that would take decades to grow. These untouched areas are even found upslope from sensitive areas, such as the high school. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to it. The EPA claims that the problem has been solved, but my goal with this study is to provide independent evidence. Are areas inside the town still contaminated?

Headframes at the Eagle and Bluebell Mines

We had hoped that students at Tintic High School would identify and collect samples inside town, but the teacher that was going to collaborate with us bowed out because it was getting too close to the end of the year and he needed the time to prepare his students for state mandated tests. So instead, my students and I had traveled around town on our previous trips looking for candidate locations that will give us a good cross section and not cause problems with identifiable private property

Collecting samples near the High School

I also wanted to get soils from a typical mineralized area that had not been mined or processed. There are a series of road cuts leading into town from the east where U.S. Highway 6 goes around several sharp turns. One of these curves cuts through a section of reddish-yellow rock and soil, the marker of a hydrothermal vein. We stopped and collected two samples, one from yellowish soil and one purplish-white. Then we drove on in to town to start collecting samples there.

We began by driving up to a dirt parking lot near the high school baseball diamond. There is an ATV track there where contamination is likely to have been stirred up by the four-wheelers and washed down a small gully through climax sagebrush and junipers. We collected inside the track, in the gully itself, and at the base of the junipers in what was undisturbed original soil.

A pump used to drain water from the mines. Power for the pump came from the Nunn brothers’ hydroelectric station in Provo Canyon.

We then proceeded around town, taking samples on the surface and about six inches below at several locations, including a few empty lots, spots next to road right of ways and the city park, downslope from the Eagle and Bluebell mine dumps, and around an old house foundation that was long since abandoned and crumbling into ruin. Altogether we collected at ten sites, or twenty samples, in town. We then drove out of town to the west and collected samples from the bottom of a wash about half way down to the old CCC camp. This would be a control.

Map of Eureka, Utah

Although we needed to collect quite a few samples in a short period of time, we also took some time to explore more of the town. Around the museum, I explained to the students how the equipment worked, such as the pneumatic hammers, skip cages, water buckets, and muckers. They looked around the old jail and discovered some papers in a room underneath, including a booklet summarizing clean-up efforts after the flooding in 1983. We also found an old, yellowed map of Eureka itself. I carefully took photos of these documents and put them back where we found them. It was a sunny, warm day and we didn’t need coats even though there was still snow on the ground in places. We drove up to get some pictures of the Eagle and Bluebell mine sites. I got out of the car and walked along a hill that is covered in rip-rap to take photos of some old mine equipment and got myself stuck in a snowbank for a minute.

Mining gear at the Chief Consolidated Mining Company headquarters.

All told, we have about 42 samples from over 20 locations all over the district. We had identified these areas using Google Earth last fall. In addition to our sample collecting, we shot video and took photos as we traveled around town, with the intent to put all of this into a video on the history and current challenges of the town. Now for the analyses!

Plastic netting used by the EPA to slow down erosion on slopes, allowing native plants to grow.

Ruined foundation of a house in Eureka. We sampled near here, since yard fill was often collected from the mine dumps.

Posted in Weekly Post | Tagged american chemical society hach grant, climax vegetation, eureka utah, hydrothermal vein, lead mining, rip rap, silver mining, soil contamination, superfund, tintic mining district | Leave a Comment »

Tintic Soil Study: Sample Trip 3

August 28, 2013 by davidvblack

Mine dump at the Tintic Standard Mine near Eureka, Utah

On Tuesday, March 12, 2013 I took three students down to Eureka, Utah to collect our third set of soil samples for our Amercian Chemical Society grant project. Jeffrey, Sean, and Indie helped to collect samples and measure the soil pHs, as well as explore the history of the Tintic Mining District.

Mine dump with contaminated soils at the Tintic Standard Mine

This time our first stop was at the old Tintic Standard Mine workings above Burgen and Dividend in the East Tintic District. Of all the ore bodies in the area, these on the east side of the Tintic Mountains were the last discovered and the Tintic Standard Mine was in full production by the 1920s. A reduction mill was built across Goshen Valley at the warm springs near Genola. Workers lived in a company town below the mine called Dividend. The mine produced well into the early 1940s, when it was partly shut down for the war effort, then re-opened. Work continued sporadically into the early 1970s.

Collar and shaft at the Tintic Standard Mine. Even with a chain link fence around the hole, the loose soil at the collar could cave in and makes this shaft a dangerous place if you get too close.

There are still quite a few artifacts and ruins at the site, and care must be taken as there is a large vertical shaft with loose dirt around the collar, so you should stay well back from it. There is a large glory hole on the back hill and two water tanks further up, with the remains of a wooden ditch that brought water down to the company buildings and change room. The main portal to the mine went back from the change room, where there is still an old stove to keep the miners warm. That portal has been sealed off.

Stove in the change room at the main portal of the Tintic Standard Mine. This portal was active off and on into the 1970s.

After exploring around, we collected some samples from the mine dump at the bottom of the hill where melting snow had created a clayey puddle. We also collected several samples along a trench that had been cut into the waste rock dump, where the soil was discolored with purplish or yellow deposits. The pH indicator needle pegged several times, showing an acidic pH of less than 3.5. It will be interesting to see what kind of lead content these samples have.

Jeffrey and Indie taking samples at the Tintic Standard Mine

We then drove into Eureka and scouted around town for some additional sample sites to collect on our final trip on Thursday, as well as to look around the mining museum, old City Hall building with its jail in back, and the cemetery. I showed the students how miners worked the air-driven hammers and how water was sprayed into the holes through the center of the drill steel. We looked at the skips or man cages, the water removal buckets, and the mucker machine out front. We walked around Main Street, which was very quiet for a Tuesday afternoon. Only a few cars were driving through.

David Black by City Hall on Main Street in Eureka, Utah.

Water chute, tanks, and old foundation at the Tintic Standard Mine

We drove out through the west end of town on Highway 6 and took a detour through the cemetery, recording with the Flip cameras as we went. We explored around the town of Mammoth and collected samples in a wash at the mouth of Mammoth Canyon. We then went on around to the Swansea mine dumps at Silver City to continue collecting samples.

Ruins of the old power plant in Eureka. Heavy machinery moving through town has contributed to the deterioration of historic buildings like this one.

Since last week, the snow has mostly melted and the ground dried out to where we could walk on it in most places without leaving muddy footprints. We sampled in several washes running off the main dump and in soils between the washes where some scrub brush survives. The main wash feeding off of the dump had several layers of brightly colored soils, ranging from reds to yellows to even a shade of green.

Mammoth Mine, headframe, and glory hole. This was the deepest mine in the district, with the richest concentration of silver and gold ore.

I can see we need to do more studying here, to see how much lead and acidic runoff continue down these washes into the valley beyond. The runoff water has left a red stain on the asphalt of the road over a hundred yards from the main dump. The soil on and near the dump itself and in the bottom of the washes is devoid of life. Even though the last time this mine waste was dug up was the 1980s, when the leach pile nearby was created, no plant life has yet to colonize the contaminated soils in about 30 years.

Sean and Indie at the Silver City mine dump.

David Black taking pH readings in the middle wash draining the mine dump at Silver City.

All told we had an enjoyable and low-key trip, and even though it was overcast the day was fairly warm. We had now collected all the samples we needed outside the remediated zone.

Contaminated soils in the wash draining the Silver City mine dump.

Posted in Weekly Post | Tagged american chemical society hach grant, eureka utah, lead contamination, mine dump, silver city, soil pH, swansea consolidated mine, tintic mining district, tintic mining museum, tintic standard mine, waste rock | Leave a Comment »

Tintic Soil Study Part 2: Collection Trip to Knight Smelter and Silver City

June 3, 2013 by davidvblack

Science Research Class at Walden School on our second collection trip.

After our fall semester, my research science class ended and the two sections of chemistry were consolidated down to one, with me teaching a computer technology course third period instead of chemistry. Without the two classes that could support the Tintic soil analysis project, I had to put the project on hold until I could get some more students involved. We also had an unusually cold January and February, with snow staying on the ground. This hampered our ability to collect samples. Between 3^rd and 4^th terms we hold a two-week Intersession at Walden School of Liberal Arts that allows us to teach specialty courses, and I dedicated my course entirely to finishing the Tintic project.

Altogether five students took the course, including Jeffery, Indi, Sean, Jem, and Aaron. To finish collecting all the samples, we had to take three additional trips down to the Eureka area. We were fortunate that the weather cooperated and warmed up enough that the snow melted.

Our second collection trip was on March 5 to the area of the Knight Smelter, the cyanide leeching pile, and Silver City. We stopped at the Bullion Beck Headframe on the way to take a group shot.

Ruins of the Knight Smelter built by Jessie Knight to process silver ore.

The Knight Smelter was built by silver tycoon Jesse Knight, who made his initial fortune with the Humbug Mine, then expanded along the Iron Blossom lode. Eventually, Uncle Jesse needed a smelter to concentrate and refine the ores from his mines, and he built it south of Eureka near the Union Pacific line. To connect his mines with the smelter and the Union Pacific main line, he built a narrow gauge railroad so that the smaller engines could make the turns and the steeper grades. A fairly level grade was built around the hills into his mines, and the road I walked on to the Iron Blossom #2 last fall followed this old grade. Jesse Knight contributed quite a bit of money to what was then the fledgling Brigham Young Academy, now Brigham Young University. The Jesse Knight Building, where I had several classes, is named after him.

Tank foundations and kiln at the Knight Smelter

The technology for refining ore went through rapid change in the 1920s. The smelter only operated for about four years, at which point it became cheaper to ship the ore by rail to the more modern smelters in Murray. The same thing happened with the Tintic Standard Mine and the reduction mill near Goshen.

There isn’t much left of the Knight Smelter except crumbling foundations for the solution tanks, a few archways where the kilns stood, and a pile of slag. Just to the south is the leeching pile. During the 1980s the price of gold jumped up when we went off the gold standard and the price was allowed to rise. Investing gurus such as Warren Buffet were advising people to invest in gold, and that drove up the price even more. Now, all these old tailings and waste rock piles that hadn’t been economical to process suddenly were. A layer of thick plastic was laid down and the waste rock crushed and piled onto the plastic, then a solution of cyanide was pumped over the pile. The cyanide would chelate with the gold and silver and trickle down through the pile into its lowest area, where it was pumped out and transported for smelting. This same process is being used at the Cripple Creek and Victor gold mine in Colorado.

Collecting a sample inside the kiln at Knight Smelter

We walked into the old smelter ruins and identified spots where there would likely be contamination, such as inside the kiln and underneath the tanks. We saw that a layer of sand was laid down under the tanks over the original soil, which is now covered with new soil deposited since the 1920s. We also collected samples from the top of the leeching pile. I picked up some samples of slag as well.

This smelter took the original ore and concentrated it by crushing and chemical action, using both physical and chemical separations. Mercury was used to bind to the silver (amalgamation). The amalgam was then heated up in a kiln to drive off the mercury and leave silver and gold. Since the silver started out in a compound with a higher oxidation state (+1) and was now a metal with an oxidation state of 0, this process is also called reduction. There were several reduction mills in the Tintic District. The leftover ore, after heating, still contained appreciable amounts of iron and lead, and was dumped onto a heap in a molten state. This waste material is called slag.

Slag at the Knight Smelter.

Sample under the tank foundations. Notice the layering of the soil; a layer of sand was laid down under the tanks when they were first built which is now covered with new topsoil.

We moved on to the waste rock pile at Silver City where the Swansea Consolidated mine was located. Here, water runoff since the pile was created in the 1980s has washed small gullies fanning out south of the pile, crossing the road, and going on down the valley. The asphalt on the road is stained red with the iron sulfides. We collected on the pile itself, and used a portable pH meter to test the soil at locations on and near the pile. It was still too muddy to walk around much, and we were getting short on time, so we packed back up and drove back to Provo. We collected ten samples from five sites on this trip.

Testing the soil around the Swansea mine dump. The pH is very low, under 3.0.

Sample at the Swansea Consolidated dump near Silver City

Posted in Weekly Post | Tagged amalgam, chelation, chemical separation, cyanide leeching, eureka utah, jessie knight, knight smelter, mine dump, physical separation, reduction mill, silver city utah, silver concentration, silver mining, slag, smelter, swansea consolidated mine, waste rock | Leave a Comment »

The Tintic Soil Study, Part 1: Fall, 2012

May 11, 2013 by davidvblack

Welcome to Eureka sign on U.S. 6

It’s time to take a break from recounting my tour through Colorado’s mining towns last summer and catch you up on what we’ve been doing this year at Walden School of Liberal Arts.

Maples in the fall near Eureka, Utah – with junipers and rabbit brush.

As mentioned earlier, we received a grant from the American Chemical Society to study lead contamination in the soils in Eureka, Utah and the surrounding area. The grant provided funds for travel, equipment, chemicals, and supplies. It took until early October to receive the money, so our first trip down had to wait until mid-October. It meant we wouldn’t have much daylight, but we’d have to do our best.

Canyon of Fire: Maples in the East Tintic Mountains

I’ve been gradually documenting the history of the area, collecting historical photos, taking photos around the town myself, etc. Back in 2009, I took a group of students with me to interview June McNulty, President of the Tintic Historical Society. He showed us through the museum and we videotaped the tour. Now, with this grant, we can tell the story of recent events in Eureka, especially the history of the EPA superfund project over the last ten years that cleaned up or covered up contaminated soils in the town.

TIntic HIgh School from the Godiva Mine site

My science research class researched the history of the area during first term while we were waiting for the grant funds. They identified 20 collection sites outside town using GoogleEarth. Some of these are old mine waste dumps, some are around smelter or concentration plants or leeching piles. Others are control sites outside the district. We were going to collaborate with students at Tintic High School, who were to collect from sites in town. Unfortunately, our collaboration fell through, so my students eventually collected from sites inside the town as well.

Valley of maple trees from a mine dump in the East Tintic Mountains

In preparation for our sample collection trips, I traveled down to the area to get some photos of fall foliage on Saturday, Sept. 22. I got there just at the right time, when the maples in the canyons were at their brightest. I photographed some areas along Highway 6 leading into town and filmed the maples in the canyons along the road leading over the top to Dividend. I then took videos around town by attaching a Flip camera to my left rearview mirror with a small claw-style tripod. I drove up to the Godiva mine site and took photos down toward the high school, then drove further up the canyon past the Knightsville site and hiked around some mine dumps further up. I had seen that there was a valley nestled inside the East Tintic Mountains from GoogleEarth and my 3D models of the area. There was a road leading along the edge of the hills, and I walked around as far as the site of the Iron Blossom #2 mine. The headframe there has recently collapsed. It was a nice trip and the photos turned out well. I also saw and photographed several deer.

Doe a Deer: A mule deer doe in the East Tintic Mountains

Ruins of the Irom Blossom #2 Headframe

I took four students to the area on Oct. 19 and we collected samples and explored the area, including the road over Silver Pass. We first collected from some old evaporation ponds near Elberta where hot water pumped out from the Burgin mines was allowed to cool and settle before discharging it into Utah Lake. During the early 1980s, as I drove home from college to my hometown of Deseret, I would pass through this area and see the water steaming as it passed down the gulley to the ponds. This was the last time they had attempted to open the mines at Burgin. We sampled from two locations inside the old ponds, which can be reached by a short walk from Highway 6.

Collecting samples at the settling ponds near Elberta

We then collected from the bottom of the wash at the mouth of the canyon leading up to Burgin. The soil here looked healthy and contained a combination of sand and humus. We then stopped at the old Burgin concentrator and took some pictures. I talked with the men at the main office of the Chief Consolidated Mine operations there about getting some samples from the tailings piles (they corrected me when I mentioned “tailings piles” around the headframes themselves and said those rocks were more properly called mine dumps or waste rock; tailings are the actual ore that has been processed).

Silver ore concentration plant at the Burgin mine

We took photos around the Trixie headframe, then drove on up the canyon over the top of Silver Pass, which I had not done before. This was the opening of the deer hunt, so I didn’t want to venture too far from the road without orange clothing.

Headframe at the Trixie Mine above Burgin.

We also collected at a mine dump next to the road in Ruby Hollow, which I later identified as the Tesora Mine. The soil there had a bright yellow color and contained obvious sulfides. Part of the shaft is still there without much protection around it.

Collecting samples at the Tesora Mine dump in Ruby Gulch

I also showed the students Silver City, the leeching pile from the 1980s when much of the waste rock and tailings were heaped up and cyanide solution was sprayed onto it, chelating the silver and gold out of the rocks. We stopped at the Bullion Beck headframe for photos and walked around the Tintic Mining Museum. It was late afternoon by then and time to get the students back.

Waste rock pile at the Swansea Consolidated Mine near Silver City

Altogether we collected six samples from three sites and the students had a chance to get to know the area. I knew that we would have to be more productive on our next trips. Back at school, we did some simple pH tests and found the first two sites (Elberta Ponds and Burgin Wash) were near neutral pH, but the Tesora Mine samples were quite acidic, at a pH of about 3.5. Other tests would have to wait until we ordered the testing supplies.

Historic churches in Eureka, Utah.

Belt-driven drill press at the Tintic Mining Museum

Posted in Weekly Post | Tagged amercian chemical society, burgin mine, eureka utah, field research, field study, hach grant, lead contamination, mine dump, silver city, soil analysis, soil pH, soil study, tailings, tesora mine, tintic mining district, waste rock | 2 Comments »

Colorado Mining Trip Day 7: American Eagles Overlook and Vindicator Valley Trail

April 5, 2013 by davidvblack

Aerial View of Cripple Creek and Victor Mine

My seventh day touring mining towns in Colorado was spent in the vicinity of Goldfield and Victor in the Cripple Creek Mining District. I traveled to the American Eagles Overlook above the Cripple Creek and Victor Gold Mine and hiked on the Vindicator Valley Trail above Goldfield.

Headframe and Shops at the American Eagles Mine

Since I had arrived in camp rather late the night before, I took all of the morning to recharge my batteries, literally and figuratively. My long trip the day before which started in South Fork and traveled through Creede, Lake City, and Gunnison had used up all the spare batteries I had for all my cameras, and I was still exhausted myself. I showered in the headquarters building of the KOA and finished setting up camp, making up my tent and sleeping bag for tonight. Then I spent the rest of the morning charging up my various camera batteries and spares in the game room while reading an old Andre Norton book on my iPad.

American Eagles Headframe

Finally in the afternoon I headed out, driving south and taking the gravel road up to the overlook. It crosses the main road used by the ore trucks taking overburden to the dump locations. I stopped on the way to look at the open pit mine operations of the Cripple Creek and Victor Mining Company, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of AngloGold Ashanti. They are digging a huge pit down through what was the old Cresson Mine (the same mine that discovered the huge vug back in 1914, basically a large geode the size of a room lined with 60,000 troy ounces of gold). I’ll speak more about the open-pit mine tomorrow, because I took an excellent tour of it. While observing the operation, I used a time-lapse app on my iPad to record the huge trucks driving their loads out of the pit.

Panorama of the Cripple Creek and Victor Open Pit Gold Mine

The American Eagles Mine was the highest mine in the district at 10,570 feet with one of the deepest shafts at 1540 feet. The land around it is a small spot of green surrounded on all sides by the CC&V operations. From there, one can see all the way to the Collegiate Peaks in the west and to Pike’s Peak to the northeast. Winfield Scott Stratton, whose famous Independence Mine turned him from an itinerant carpenter into the richest man in the district, bought the American Eagles Mine in 1895 as part of his consolidation of mines in the area. Today, the old headframe still stands with its double hoist and cage. Several out buildings, such as the shifter’s house and blacksmith shop, still stand as well. I spent a very pleasant hour at the top, reading the signs and enjoying the cool breeze.

Dumping Overburden from the CC&V Open Pit Mine

Vindicator Valley with Headframe and Mill

On the way back down, I stopped and hiked the Vindicator Valley trail. This area lies between the overlook and the town of Goldfield. It includes the Vindicator Mine and Mill, with a large steel headframe and the decaying remains of the mill. I walked along the path, which is about 2 miles total. In places it was a bit of an uphill hike, and I should have been tired by the altitude, but I have grown acclimated and I actually felt better and more vigorous that I do at my normal 4500 feet.

Sign for the Vindicator Mine and Mill

All through the valley are many remnants of mining structures, such as powder magazines, ore bins and transport systems, headframes, and mills. Some of the structures have been moved here to preserve them from the CC&V operations. The company seems to have a real interest in preserving the history of the area, and Colorado overall does a much better job of this than Utah, where the only value seems to be to close the mines, cover the dumps, and pretend mining never happened.

Steel Headframe for the Vindicator Mine

Other structures I passed included the LaBella steam powered electric plant that was at the bottom of the trail and powered the operations in the area, the Gold Knob Mine (seen as wooden cribbing toward Goldfield), and the Theresa Mine headframe. This mine was active from about 1895 through the 1950s. It was closed during World War II, as was all gold and silver mining in the country. By the time the mines reopened, so much work was needed to repair and upgrade them that most of the mines closed. It wasn’t until the 1970s that gold operations started up again, mostly leaching of old low-grade mine waste and some small open pit operations. But in the 1990s a large-scale open pit mining operation was engineered and begun which is now the CC&V mine. As the mine has grown, so have the piles of overburden rock, seen on the upper slopes of Vindicator Valley.

LaBella Electric Plant Site

From photos I’ve seen of what the area around Victor looked like in the early 1900s, things have changed quite a bit. Many of these mines, such as the Theresa, were worked off and on from the 1890s through the 1950s, and many original wooden headframes were eventually replaced by steel headframes.

Theresa Mine Headframe

Some structures were torn down for scrap metal, others were destroyed by time. Some, such as the Lillie Mine and Mill, were bought out by other companies (such as the Vindicator Mine or the Gold Cycle Mining Group owned by David Moffat and A. E. Carlton, which bought up many of the defunct claims) and their buildings were torn down and foundations buried by waste rock. In the 1970s and 80s much of this waste rock (huge piles of it) were dug up and processed using the leach pile method to recover gold from the marginal ores. This changed the look of the valley and moderated it. The CC&V mine has done a lot to reclaim the slopes and replant native species, such as areas of pine trees growing throughout the valley. They have reinforced some of the structures and built the trail systems with interpretive signs.

Anna J. Mine looking up Vindicator Valley to the American Eagles Overlook.

Powder Magazine. The explosives had to be kept separately from the mines to prevent accidental destruction.

After this walk I drove into Victor at sunset to try to buy a steak for supper, but the small grocery store only had hamburger. I did take some good photos of the town in nice lighting. Back at camp, sunset lingered as I cooked supper and took some additional photos of the grass and aspens around camp.

A Sign in Victor, Colorado explaining the bawdy side of town.

The Fortune Club in Victor, Colorado, known for its . . . er . . . entertainment.

Third Street in Victor, Colorado.

The Back Side of Pike’s Peak

Aspens and Colorado Blue Spruce at my camp.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged a e carlton, american eagles overlook, cresson mine, cripple creek, cripple creek and victor mine, david moffat, fortune club, gold mine, goldfield colorado, headframe, mine reclamation, open pit mine, pikes peak, theresa mine, victor colorado, vindicator valley, vug, winfield scott stratton | Leave a Comment »

Colorado Trip Day 6 Part 2: Lake City

January 21, 2013 by davidvblack

Parked along the switchbacks from Slumgullion Pass

I came to Lake City from the south along Highway 149, driving from Creede along the headwaters of the Rio Grande River over the Continental Divide at Spring Creek Pass (10,901 feet). After staying on the high plateau, the road climbs again to Slumgullion Pass at 11,361 feet. It then descends toward Lake City, taking a series of dramatic switchbacks. At one hairpin turn, there is a nice overlook of Lake San Cristobal and Lake City. I stopped to look at the interpretive signs and take a few photos.

The San Juan Mountains of Southwestern Colorado

I parked along the old main street of town and found a nice old-fashioned soda fountain, the San Juan Soda Company, in a store next to the historic Miners and Merchants Bank. I had a tasty mint chocolate chip shake, which really hit the spot. I asked for directions and drove northeast out of town up Henson Canyon about two miles in a slight drizzling rain for the Hard Tack Mine.

Entrance to the Hard Tack Mine near Lake City, Colorado

As I always do, I asked the tour guide if I could videotape the tour, and he told me to check with the owner, who was in the main office next to the mine entrance. She was afraid that I would show their tour to “the competition” and refused to let me videotape it, although she said that photographs were allowed. I tried to assure her that my reporting should help business, but she wasn’t convinced. At least this would give me a chance to take more photographs. As things turned out, I’m glad I didn’t tape the tour. The guide was fairly new, having only done this about two months. He was from out of state, and was unable to answer questions about the types of minerals found here or how mining began around Lake City (which you would think would be standard background any guide would know). Hopefully he’s done more homework since.

Mucking Machine Diagram in the Hard Tack Mine

The tour itself was disappointing compared with other tours I’ve taken on my trip through Colorado. To begin with, the Hard Tack Mine wasn’t a mine at all; it was originally blasted as an adit to reach other mines further up the mountain but was abandoned after reaching only 350 feet. No ore was ever struck. The current owners came in, cleaned out the old works, blasted a few way stations to hold exhibits, brought equipment in from other places, and called it a “mine tour.” Now, if I had never been on any other mine tours (such as the one in Creede just this morning, which was far superior) then I might have learned some interesting things about hard rock mining. But the other tours at least had tour guides who had been miners and knew their stuff, and their displays were better designed and more detailed. And their mannequins were less cheesy.

Jack leg drill display in the Hard Tack Mine

There were a few good things about this tour. The displays had some illustrated signs that did a good job explaining how the drills and other equipment worked. The signs were on paper inside plastic sleeves and were hard to photograph because they didn’t lie flat, but I did the best I could. There was also a good mineral exhibit and some photographs of the mining in the area. But the tour didn’t last very long nor was it very informative. There is a museum in town that no doubt gives more details about the history of the area, but my time was short – I wanted to get to Victor before nightfall. I’ve had to do some further research on my own.

Lake City Colorado from Highway 149

Lake City, Colorado is the county seat of Hinsdale County and the only incorporated town in the county, which is the most sparsely populated county in Colorado. This should tell you something about how remote the town is from just about anywhere else; although it is not very far as the eagle flies from Lake City to Ouray or Silverton, you need a good four-wheel drive vehicle to make it over Engineer or Cinnamon Pass. This silver camp is located on the west slope of the continental divide along Colorado Highway 149, northwest of Creede and southwest of Gunnison.

Lake City in 1881

The same caldera eruptions that brought veins of silver, gold, lead, zinc, and copper to the San Juan Mountains also placed veins in this area, cut into by glaciers to form the rugged peaks and ridges of the San Juans. About 800 years ago, a large earthflow filled the canyon and damned off the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River, creating Lake San Cristobal, the second largest natural lake in Colorado. Lake City is located in a dell about three miles below this natural dam. The slide itself is called the Slumgullion Slide, because its brownish-orange color studded with boulders reminded the early miners of slumgullion stew, a beef stew with onions, carrots, and potatoes.

Lake San Cristobal above Lake City, Colorado

This area was home to various Ute tribes, especially the Tabeguache Tribe led by Chief Ouray. They originally ranged from the San Luis Valley through the San Juans. But their range was reduced through several treaties, ending with the Brunot Treaty of 1873, which moved the Utes to the Uintah-Ouray Reservation in Eastern Utah.

Lake City winter

Even before the treaty was ratified, prospectors were heading into the San Juans, pressing south along Lake Fork to the area around Lake San Cristobal. One party of six men, led by Alferd Packer, got caught in deep snows as they tried to hike to the Los Pinos Indian Agency near Saguache. They ran out of food and even ate their shoe leather to try to stay alive. Only Packer made it to the station.

Alferd Packer. You would not want to hire this man as a tour guide . . .

Later that year, the bodies of the other five men were found dead at the base of Slumgullion Pass and showed signs of foul play and cannibalism. Packer had seemed well enough fed, and was spending money from several different wallets. He was arrested and charged with murder, escaped, was captured seven years later and convicted of murder in the Hinsdale County Courthouse. He was retried in Gunnison and found guilty again, then sentenced to 40 years. He was later pardoned by the Governor of Colorado. He always claimed he had killed one of the men in self-defense, and that another man, the oldest of their party, had died of natural causes and was probably eaten by the others.

The Golden Fleece mines above the Slumgullion Slide.

Other prospectors discovered claims, which were staked out and filed just as soon as the treaty was complete. The first big strike was the Golden Fleece claim discovered by Enos Hotchkiss (who also built the first cabin in the area of what is now Lake City). He and Henry Finley and D. P. Church were building a toll road between Silverton and Saguache in 1874 when he located rich gold ore by the lake. By 1875, Lake City was incorporated as a town, and became the county seat. Within a few years over 500 structures had been built and mining had extended all the way into the valleys and passes above Lake San Cristobal. The town itself became an important jumping off, resupply, and smelting point.

Illustrated map of Lake City, Colorado

In 1889 the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad built a narrow gauge line in from the north and the ores could now be transported much more cheaply. Otto Mears built toll roads over the passes from Silverton and Ouray to Lake City and charged $2.25 per passenger for the daily stagecoach runs. It would take two days to make the bone-jarring ride, and the stages would stop over at Rose’s Cabin, originally built in 1874 by Corydon Rose as a one-story log cabin. It eventually grew into a saloon and hotel, stable, store, post office, and cultural center for the mining claims in the area.

Downtown Lake City, Colorado

Lake City reached its peak population of about 6000 around 1900, but the writing was already on the wall. The Silver Panic of 1893 cut the price of silver so much that it doomed much of the mining in the San Juan Mountains and elsewhere in Colorado and throughout the West. Only those mines that contained enough gold and other ores to ride out the downturn were able to survive. Now maybe 500 people live there year-round.

Soda fountain in Lake City, Colorado

The last train out of Lake City left on May 25, 1933. After the railway was abandoned, Mike Burke, owner of the Ute-Ulay Mine, had a 1928 Pierce Arrow automobile remodeled with train wheels so it could run on the tracks. It was called the Galloping Goose because of its tendency to weave back and forth on the rails.

Silver ore from the Ute-Ulay Mine near Lake City, Colorado

The Ute-Ulay (or Ule) Mine is one of the more famous in the area, with over $10 million worth of silver and lead extracted. Its mill was used as late as 1983, but now the buildings, mill site, boarding house, tram line, etc. are decaying and in danger of collapsing under heavy winter snows. The current owners, LKA International, have donated the land to Hinsdale County and options are being looked at to renovate the structures and remediate the tailings pile and pit near the mill.

Miners at the Black Creek Mine near Lake City, Colorado.

The county invited in the nonprofit Colorado Art Ranch to put together the Hardrock Revision Team, a group of seven artists to find creative ways to utilize the property while maintaining its historic appeal. Some ideas include turning the over 100 miles of tunnels into a large Aeolian harp, converting the water tank into a camera obscura, covering the roofs of the buildings with protective tarps painted with mining scenes, and turning the tailings pit into an ice skating rink once it has been remediated. This is not a bunch of outsiders coming in to tell the community what to do – it was initiated by Lake City citizens. It will be interesting to see what happens, and perhaps I’ll have to stop when I come this way again. Here is a link to the article I found on this project: http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.20/can-an-old-mine-become-a-work-of-art/article_view?b_start:int=0. I just wish similar efforts could happen in Utah before the state shuts all our mining history down or all the old structures collapse into oblivion.

Mining structures in the Lake City area

As I left the Hardtack Mine, I drove north out of Lake City on Highway 149 and left the San Juan Mountains behind. North of Lake City, large basalt flows continue all the way to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. I joined U.S. 50 nine miles west of Gunnison and stopped to gas up. Now I was on a familiar road – I’ve traveled most of the length of U. S. 50 at one time or another. I’ve been on this section with my children 10 years ago when I was last in the San Juans.

Captain John W. Gunnison, for whom many towns and places are named in Colorado and Utah. His 1853 survey expedition was attacked by a Pahvant war party in Oct., 1853 west of Deseret, Utah.

Captain John William Gunnison left his name all over Colorado and into central and western Utah, but not in Nevada. He never made it that far. As a Captain of the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, he was commissioned in 1853 to survey a route for the transcontinental railroad between the 38^th and 39^th parallels. U.S. 50 and parts of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad follow the route his team surveyed. They discovered the gorge of black basalt and the river that bears his name. Once they reached Utah, they surveyed along the Sevier River near the site of Gunnison, Utah and passed through Leamington Canyon into the Pahvant Valley. Fearing the approach of winter, he sped up the work by splitting his team into two groups. His half of the party surveyed a large meander in the Sevier River where the Gunnison Bend Reservoir is now located. Several miles further down the river, west of what is now Deseret (my hometown), they were attacked by Pahvant Utes on the warpath. Of eleven men in the group, only three survived. Gunnison was killed. I travelled east on U. S. 50, thinking about how Deseret would be different if Gunnison had finished his survey and the transcontinental railroad had followed that route instead of the more northern route it took.

Hidden Treasure Mine near Lake City, Colorado

I became so sleepy that I had to pull over and take a nap for an hour, then press on. Clouds gathered as I drove up into the Sawatch Range and it began to drizzle. I had intended to take the tramway to the top of Monarch Pass, but I was behind schedule and it wouldn’t have been much of a view in the rain, so I pressed on. I drove into Buena Vista and ate supper at a burger place, then tried to get the phone number for the KOA campground outside of Victor that I was going to stay at. It was getting dark and I wanted to let them know I was going to be late coming in. My wife looked up the number for me (somehow I had forgotten to write it down with all my other contact information when planning this trip) as I drove east on U.S. 24. I had to double back to find a spot with cell tower reception in order to get the number, but was not able to get through to the campground. They must have already closed the office.

The Road to Gunnison

By now it was completely dark, so once again I travelled this highway in the night, the last time being in 2010 when we drove out to Denver, stopping in Cripple Creek. Now I was returning to complete the visit I made then. At least I had driven this route once in the daytime, back in September, 2009 on my way back from Philadelphia, and had good photos of the scenery.

My route from Lake City to Victor, Colorado on July 14, 2012.

I was getting very tired by the time I got to Divide and turned south. I took the turn toward Victor, but somehow missed the KOA in the dark and wound up driving all the way into town. I turned around and headed back. I almost missed the sign again. The KOA is located just south of the turnoff to Victor, and I arrived about 11:00. The manager had left a map for me in the entranceway to the office with my site circled, a tent site on the outer edge of the camp. It took a couple of drives around the camp before I found the right trail leading off to the tent sites. Mine was Site 1, nestled back in the aspens with good privacy. I was too tired to make camp, so I just rearranged my gear, setting stuff outside like the tent that I knew bears wouldn’t get in to, and made a fairly good bed in the back of my minivan.

Posted in Uncategorized, Weekly Post | Tagged adit, buena vista colorado, caldera, golden fleece mine, gunnison, hard tack mine, lake city colorado, lake san cristobal, mine tour, monarch pass, san juan mountains, silver mining, slumgullion, ute-ulay mine, western slope | Leave a Comment »

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The Elements Unearthed

Our Discovery and Usage of the Chemical Elements

Introducing the STEM-Arts Alliance

Material Science Workshop

Tintic Soil Study Results and Conclusions

Testing Tintic Soil Samples

Tintic Soil Study: Sample Collection Trip 4

Tintic Soil Study: Sample Trip 3

Tintic Soil Study Part 2: Collection Trip to Knight Smelter and Silver City

The Tintic Soil Study, Part 1: Fall, 2012

Colorado Mining Trip Day 7: American Eagles Overlook and Vindicator Valley Trail

Colorado Trip Day 6 Part 2: Lake City

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