Mine Geology

Understanding where the ore is — and why. The geology every mining engineer needs: rocks and ore minerals, how ore deposits form, geological structures and their measurement, exploration and drilling, and estimating resources with block models, inverse-distance weighting and kriging.

• Rocks & Minerals — Minerals are naturally occurring crystalline compounds; rocks are aggregates of minerals. Learn the rock cycle and three rock types, how minerals are identified (hardness, specific gravity, lustre), the key ore minerals, and how to calculate metal grade from mineral content and bulk density of mixtures.
• Ore Deposits — Ore deposits are rare natural concentrations of metals. Learn the main deposit types — porphyry copper, VMS, epithermal and orogenic gold, magmatic nickel, banded iron formations, sediment-hosted, placers and brines — how they form, their typical size and grade, and how deposit type guides exploration and mining method.
• Geological Structures — Faults, folds, joints and veins control where ore is found and how rock behaves. Learn strike and dip, apparent dip, true thickness from drill intersections, types of faults and folds, stereonets, and why structures matter for grade continuity and slope/tunnel stability.
• Exploration & Drilling — Finding and defining ore: geological mapping, geochemistry, geophysics (magnetics, gravity, IP, EM), drilling methods (RC, diamond core, air-core), core recovery, sampling and length-weighted compositing, and QA/QC with standards, blanks and duplicates.
• Resource Estimation — Turning drill-hole samples into a 3D block model of tonnes and grade. Learn geological domaining, block models, nearest-neighbour and inverse-distance weighting, variograms (nugget, sill, range), ordinary kriging, validation, and resource classification — with a Python IDW implementation.