Everyday connections

Whether you are using a cell phone for games, to contact friends, or as a makeshift, hand-held Geiger counter, phones have become pretty indispensable. The apps in your phone are created with computer programming, much like you are doing in Scratch.

More than 40 mined minerals are used to produce a single smartphone, such as indium that turns glass into a touch-sensitive screen, carbon in the phone case, and arsenic in radiofrequency amplifiers.

It is important to understand where the minerals that make up the raw materials for our phones come from: they are mined from the Earth.