The stamp mill is a piece of mining
equipment that has been made obsolete by modern methods
and machines but for the demonstration of the conservation
of mechanical energy it is excellent.
The pictures are of stamp mills left to rot by old mine sites
in Colorado. The stamp mill's purpose was to crush ore
down to a size that allowed it to be processed, mainly used in
hard rock mining operations. The way it did this was to
lift a large steel rod with a hammer-like head, the stamp, and
then drop it on the rock. This was accomplished by a
camshaft connected to some source of rotational power, usually
a steam engine or water wheel. The height the stamp was
lifted times the mass of the stamp times the acceleration due
to gravity gives the amount of potential energy stored in a
lifted stamp. When the stamp got released it would fall
accelerating at 9.8m/s/s until striking a rock imparting to
that ro
ck
its kinetic energy, which is equal to its potential at the top
of the stroke, and smashing the rock into little bits.
www.miningartifacts.org/OldMineExploration.html
The pictures are of stamp mills left to rot by old mine sites
in Colorado. The stamp mill's purpose was to crush ore
down to a size that allowed it to be processed, mainly used in
hard rock mining operations. The way it did this was to
lift a large steel rod with a hammer-like head, the stamp, and
then drop it on the rock. This was accomplished by a
camshaft connected to some source of rotational power, usually
a steam engine or water wheel. The height the stamp was
lifted times the mass of the stamp times the acceleration due
to gravity gives the amount of potential energy stored in a
lifted stamp. When the stamp got released it would fall
accelerating at 9.8m/s/s until striking a rock imparting to
that rock
its kinetic energy, which is equal to its potential at the top
of the stroke, and smashing the rock into little bits.www.miningartifacts.org/OldMineExploration.html
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