Group 12 element people in the 17th century. German chemist Andreas Marggraf is usually given credit for discovering pure metallic zinc in a 1746 experiment by heating a mixture of calamine and charcoal in a closed vessel without copper to obtain a metal. Experiments on frogs by the Italian doctor Luigi Galvani in 1780 with brass paved the way for the discovery of electrical batteries, galvanization and cathodic protection. In 1880, Galvani's friend, Alessandro Volta, invented the Voltaic pile. The biological importance of zinc was not discovered until 1940 when carbonic anhydrase, an enzyme that scrubs carbon dioxide from blood, was shown to
Ore Ore An ore is an occurrence of rock or sediment that contains sufficient minerals with economically important elements, typically metals, that can be economically extracted from the deposit. The ores are extracted from the earth through mining; they are then refined (often via smelting) to extract the valuable element, or elements. The ore grade, or concentration of an ore mineral or metal, as well as its form of occurrence, will directly affect the costs associated with mining the ore. The cost of extraction must thus be weighed against the metal value contained in the rock to determine what ore can