Talkin’ about conflict minerals:
Congo is a home to some of the largest reserves of gold, tin, timber, diamond, copper, cobalt, tungsten and tantalum – to name but a few – in Africa. The most lucrative of all is columbite-tantalite, better known as coltan: a dull metallic ore that stores electricity and makes our mobile phones vibrate.
Sigh. The tantalum comes from the columbo-tantalite (not columbite-tantalite) . Our writer here is showing that she’s not quite up with what is happening, isn’t she?
Are you sure? I always thought columbo-tantalite was what they make glass eyes out of?
I always thought columbo-tantalite was what they make glass eyes out of
No. It’s what was perpetually just beyond the reach of dishevelled American police detectives back in the 1970s.
Coltan makes a mobile phone vibrate? I don’t think so, that would be a vibration motor. I think the writer (who is a man) has got coltan confused with wolframite – tungsten is used in vibration motors because it’s dense and hard-wearing.
It’s also not the ore that is used but the metal which is refined from it.
Every newspaper story I have ever read, that I personally knew about, was riddled with mistakes and factual misstatements. I suspect the same is true for almost all stories, period.
It seems a common mistake:
http://www.cellular-news.com/coltan/
http://www.engineering.com/Library/ArticlesPage/tabid/85/ArticleID/83/Columbite-tantalite-COLTAN.aspx
http://www.globalissues.org/article/442/guns-money-and-cell-phones
http://iopscience.iop.org/0952-4746/27/2/005
All this depravity and mass slaughter in the Congo recorded here and you are worried about a spelling mistake ?
What Martin said.