Example of extraction of iron

In simplest terms: grind the ore rock to powder, keep the powder that sticks to a magnet. Somewhat more detail: the large iron mining companies here use the open pit method. Move the soil off the top until they reach the ore vein, blast the rock with explosives into quarter ton or smaller pieces, use heavy moving equipment to bring the ore to the crushing and processing plant (usually less than two miles away). The next several steps are crushing and grinding the ore to a powder. Then the ore powder is usually mixed with water to form a "slurry" to make it slightly easier to handle. Then it is magnetically separated, and the magnetic stuff is filtered and dried, then baked into small round balls called "pellets" that have specific chemical and physical characteristics. These pellets are sent directly to iron refineries (somewhere else like Pittsburg or Detroit) to be melted and formed into iron and steel parts. Incidentally, each of the above steps and several others support many good size businesses in the area around the mines, each of which support other businesses.