Chemistry in Industry
Explore metals, plastics, and building materials.
What this lesson covers
Why it matters
You can't dig a steel beam out of the ground or pump a plastic bottle from a well. Industry is chemistry scaled up — turning raw earth into the stuff of cities.
Predict first
Why do we need chemical processes to get iron from its ore?
The iron in the ore is chemically bonded to oxygen in iron oxide, so the metal must be freed by a chemical reaction — you can't simply wash it out. Industry does this at giant scale: ore→metal, oil→plastic, limestone→cement.
- The ore is already pure iron, just dirty
- Iron is chemically bonded to oxygen and must be freed — correct
- Heating makes the iron float to the top
What you do
Sort each product by the raw material it's made from.
Check yourself
Why can't you just melt iron ore to get pure iron?
Many iron ores contain iron oxide compounds, such as hematite or magnetite. Freeing the metal needs a chemical reaction to break the iron–oxygen bonds, not just heat.
Plastics are made from…
Plastics are polymers built from hydrocarbons in crude oil and natural gas.
- Iron is bonded to oxygen; the bonds must be broken chemically — correct
- The ore is already pure iron
- Melting destroys the iron
- crude oil (petroleum) — correct
- sand and salt
- iron and coal