Ore 17: Fill & Download for Free

It really depends on which perspective you take.Narrowly, in terms of export earnings, its iron ore (17%), followed by coal (15%), natural gas (6%) and gold (5%). But in terms of the share of employment, agriculture, forestry and fisheries (2.5%) (of which agriculture has the largest share) exceeds mining (1.7%). Overall, in terms of the contribution to GDP, its mining of all forms (7%) followed by agriculture, etc. (2%).In reality, natural resources aren’t as important to the Australian economy as they once were, especially with the contribution of agriculture etc. in relative decline. Compared to other developed countries, Australia is relatively more dependent on natural resources in terms of GDP (but still <10%), but globally much less.

This was me at age 17. Lake Tapawingo, MO USAThis is me at age 39. Portland, Ore. USACould be worse.

1886.This is actually one of my favorite stories in chemistry. Charles Hall was a 17-year-old college student. One of his professors was giving a lecture on aluminum, and pointed out the irony that aluminum ore was one of the most abundant metal ores on earth, but aluminum metal was rare and precious, because the process of turning ore to metal was so difficult. He mentioned that, if someone could come up with a cheap way to turn aluminum ore into metal, he’d become the richest man in the world.Charles Hall decided that sounded pretty good to him.For the next five years, in a workshop he built in his family’s woodshed, he labored and experimented. Finally, at the age of 22, he cracked this particular nut, and developed the basic electrolytic process for producing aluminum that’s still used today.Now, Charles Hall didn’t have a monopoly on the process. By impressive coincidence, another 22-year-old in France named Paul Heroult independently invented the same process in the same year. But Hall did help to found Alcoa, which quickly grew into a large company and remains a major player in the aluminum industry. Hall may not have become the wealthiest man on earth, but he did gain a large fortune by his discovery.It’s not uncommon for a bright young person to hear about an intractable problem and assign themself to fix it. It’s pretty uncommon for him/her to succeed and make a real change in the world as a result. That’s why I love to hear stories like this.