Carbon is a chemical element with symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Three isotopes occur naturally, 12C and 13C being stable, while 14C is a radionuclide, decaying with a half-life of about 5,730 years. Carbon is one of the few elements known since antiquity.
Diamond is a solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. At room temperature and pressure, another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the chemically stable form, but diamond almost never converts to it. Diamond has the highest hardness and thermal conductivity of any natural material, properties that are utilized in major industrial applications such as cutting and polishing tools. They are also the reason that diamond anvil cells can subject materials to pressures found deep in the Earth.
A pencil is an implement for writing or drawing, constructed of a narrow, solid pigment core in a protective casing that prevents the core from being broken and/or marking the user’s hand.
Molybdenite is a mineral of molybdenum disulfide, MoS2. Similar in appearance and feel to graphite, molybdenite has a lubricating effect that is a consequence of its layered structure. The atomic structure consists of a sheet of molybdenum atoms sandwiched between sheets of sulfur atoms. The Mo-S bonds are strong, but the interaction between the sulfur atoms at the top and bottom of separate sandwich-like tri-layers is weak, resulting in easy slippage as well as cleavage planes. Molybdenite crystallizes in the hexagonal crystal system as the common polytype 2H and also in the trigonal system as the 3R polytype.
Carbon is capable of forming many allotropes due to its valency. Well-known forms of carbon include diamond and graphite. In recent decades many more allotropes, or forms of carbon, have been discovered and researched including ball shapes such as buckminsterfullerene and sheets such as graphene. Larger scale structures of carbon include nanotubes, nanobuds and nanoribbons. Other unusual forms of carbon exist at very high temperatures or extreme pressures. Around 500 hypothetical 3-periodic allotropes of carbon are known at the present time according to SACADA database.
Amorphous carbon is free, reactive carbon that does not have any crystalline structure. Amorphous carbon materials may be stabilized by terminating dangling-π bonds with hydrogen. As with other amorphous solids, some short-range order can be observed. Amorphous carbon is often abbreviated to aC for general amorphous carbon, aC:H or HAC for hydrogenated amorphous carbon, or to ta-C for tetrahedral amorphous carbon.
Borrowdale is a valley and civil parish in the English Lake District in the Borough of Allerdale in Cumbria, England. It lies within the historic county boundaries of Cumberland. It is sometimes referred to as Cumberland Borrowdale to distinguish it from another Borrowdale in the historic county of Westmorland.
Joseph Dixon (1799–1869) was an inventor, entrepreneur and the founder of what became the Dixon Ticonderoga Company, a well-known manufacturer of pencils in the United States.
Grey Knotts is a fell in the English Lake District. It is situated one kilometre south of the B5289 road as it crosses the Honister Pass. It is well seen from mid-Borrowdale as it rises above Seatoller. Grey Knotts reaches a height of 697 metres (2287 feet) and is part of a ridge which ascends from the woodland behind Seatoller and continues south-west and then south for four kilometres to Great Gable. The fell's name really only applies to the summit rocks, but has been adopted for the entire fell with the high ground in this area, locally known as Seatoller Fell on Ordnance Survey maps.
Tantiusques ("Tant-E-oos-kwiss") is a 57-acre (230,000 m2) open space reservation and historic site registered with the National Register of Historic Places. The reservation is located in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, and is owned and managed by The Trustees of Reservations; it is notable for its historic, defunct graphite mines. This is a rural area with much of the adjacent and surrounding area undeveloped and forested. The reservation is entirely forested with oak-hickory forest and red maple in the wet areas and mountain laurel abundant throughout the understory. The name Tantiusques comes from a Nipmuc word meaning “the place between two low hills." The Nipmuc used the graphite to make ceremonial paints. The property also contains the ruins of a 19th-century period house that belonged to a mine worker of mixed African American and Native American ancestry.
Seathwaite is a small hamlet in Borrowdale valley in the Lake District of Cumbria, North West England. It is located 13 kilometres (8 mi) southwest of Keswick at the end of a minor road that heads southwest from the hamlet of Seatoller, which is where the B5289 road begins its steep climb up the pass to Honister Hause on the boundary between Borrowdale civil parish and Buttermere civil parish.
Ancuabe is a town in eastern Mozambique in Ancuabe District, Cabo Delgado Province. It is the seat of the district. According to the 1997 census it has a population of 12,561.
Mining in Austria is an industry on the decline.
Mining in North Korea is important to the country's economy. North Korea is naturally abundant in metals such as magnesite, zinc, tungsten, and iron; with magnesite resources of 6 billion tonnes, particularly in the Hamgyeong-do and Jagang-do provinces. However, often these cannot be mined due to the acute shortage of electricity in the country, as well as the lack of proper tools to mine these materials and an antiquated industrial base. Coal, iron ore, limestone, and magnesite deposits are larger than other mineral commodities. Mining joint ventures with other countries include China, Canada, Egypt, and South Korea.
The Donja Ljubata mine is one of the largest graphite mines in Serbia. The mine is located in Donja Ljubata in Pčinja District. The mine has reserves amounting to 5.88 million tonnes of ore grading 3.4% graphite metal.
The Molo mine is one of the largest graphite mines in Madagascar. The mine is located in Atsimo-Andrefana. The mine has reserves amounting to 120 million tonnes of ore grading 8% graphite metal.
The Pingdu mine is one of the largest graphite mines in China and in the world. The mine is located in the east of the country in Shandong. The mine has estimated reserves of 100 million tonnes of ore 10% graphite.
The Uley graphite project is a graphite mine at Uley 23km southwest of Port Lincoln on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. It is also known as the Ouray mine. The mine is under "care and maintenance".
Valence Industries was the company that owned the Uley Graphite Project and associated facilities near Port Lincoln in regional South Australia. The project is one of the largest coarse flake graphite deposits in the world, and is acknowledged as a significant area of graphite mineralisation. Valence Industries changed its name to Quantum Graphite Limited on 14 July 2017. The company's shares are suspended from trading and it is subject to a deed of company arrangement.
