Mining for Chocolate

In lab this week, students used a chocolate chip cookie to simulate a surface mining site.  Using special tools (a wooden toothpick, a plastic toothpick, and a paperclip) to "mine" the chocolate chips from the cookie, we could quickly see the destruction caused by the extraction.  We then used a series of simple math equations to see if we made a profit or had a loss. 

Using a chocolate chip cookie to simulate surface mining.