Fruit Cake Mining worksheet

Year Level(s)	Years 3-6 Years 7-10
Subject Area(s)	Geography Science SOSE Earth & Environmental Science
Topic(s)	Environment Mining Rehabilitation
Resource Type	Experiment

Experiment with mining using a piece of fruitcake. This is an activity sheet providing instructions for a simulated mining experiment. Students use various tools to remove different fruits, representing different minerals, from a piece of fruit cake, which represents the mine site. They are then required to rehabilitate the ‘mine site’. The sheet includes questions to test student understanding and a teacher guide.

Educational value statement

Simulates the issues related to extracting minerals with different values
Deals with the environmental impact of mining
Includes a section for teachers with details of requirements, a lesson plan and extension activities
Can be downloaded as a PDF file.

Key learning objectives

Students explain the relationship between rocks and minerals
Students describe the issues involved in mining and rehabilitating combined ore bodies
Students demonstrate how mining can produce changes in the Earth’s surface.

Strands