page_title: Copper
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Copper / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: A graph of the History of Copper prices on the LME, from 2003-2008. Prices are in US Dollars per metric tonne.
context_page_description: Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orange color. Copper is used as a conductor of heat and electricity, as a building material, and as a constituent of various metal alloys, such as sterling silver used in jewelry, cupronickel used to make marine hardware and coins, and constantan used in strain gauges and thermocouples for temperature measurement.
  Copper is one of the few metals that can occur in nature in a directly usable metallic form. This led to very early human use in several regions, from c. 8000 BC. Thousands of years later, it was the first metal to be smelted from sulfide ores, c. 5000 BC; the first metal to be cast into a shape in a mold, c. 4000 BC; and the first metal to be purposefully alloyed with another metal, tin, to create bronze, c. 3500 BC.
  In the Roman era, copper was mined principally on Cyprus, the origin of the name of the metal, from aes сyprium, later corrupted to сuprum. Coper and copper were derived from this, the later spelling first used around 1530.
context_section_description: Most copper is mined or extracted as copper sulfides from large open pit mines in porphyry copper deposits that contain 0.4 to 1.0% copper. Sites include Chuquicamata, in Chile, Bingham Canyon Mine, in Utah, United States, and El Chino Mine, in New Mexico, United States. According to the British Geological Survey, in 2005, Chile was the top producer of copper with at least one-third of the world share followed by the United States, Indonesia and Peru. Copper can also be recovered through the in-situ leach process. Several sites in the state of Arizona are considered prime candidates for this method. The amount of copper in use is increasing and the quantity available is barely sufficient to allow all countries to reach developed world levels of usage.
caption: Copper prices 2003–2011 in US$ per tonne
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