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IrelandCrashCourse follows the minerals inside your smartphone
Sage Magee's geology lesson connects mining methods with planned obsolescence, electronic waste and the search for less damaging extraction.
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How do we Mine Minerals?: Crash Course Geology #22
Things we can learn from the video
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- 1:19Mining uses four main extraction methods: underground, surface, in-situ and placer.
- 2:35Mineral extraction can destroy habitats, pollute groundwater and expose miners to hazards.
- 3:47Critical minerals, including copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium, support technologies used in the energy transition.
- 5:27Mineral-efficient designs and longer-lasting devices could reduce demand for newly extracted resources.
- 6:20Electronic waste can shift environmental risks to lower-income regions when exported and processed unsafely.
- 7:46Recycling policies and research into recovering metals from shredded hard drives offer possible ways to reuse materials.
A rock named Dwayne gets consulted before CrashCourse tackles a decidedly human problem: how to keep making useful technology without treating its raw materials as disposable.
In "How do we Mine Minerals?: Crash Course Geology #22," Sage Magee follows minerals from the ground into everyday devices. The lesson moves through underground, surface, in-situ and placer mining, then confronts the habitat damage, groundwater pollution and worker hazards that extraction can bring. Its most useful turn comes afterward: getting minerals out of the ground is only part of the problem. Designing devices that use fewer resources and last longer matters too.
At roughly 85,000 views, it is the most-watched of CrashCourse's two new uploads this week. The comments extend the lesson into ordinary life: viewers discuss phones becoming obsolete, the difficulty of finding e-waste recycling and whether asteroid mining might eventually offer another source of materials. One supplies the inevitable Minecraft joke.
The other new episode, "How Big of a Problem is Voter Fraud?: Crash Course US Government #6," examines election security and misinformation. It currently brings in the most daily views of any video on the channel, with the earlier voter-turnout and Electoral College lessons also among its busiest uploads.
CrashCourse added about 100,000 subscribers over the week, even as its current daily viewing runs below its usual level. Its weekly views were close to TED's, a useful bit of context among large educational channels. But the geology episode supplies the week's most tangible question: what happens to the minerals in a phone after its owner moves on?
Published on Trari
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What viewers say
this is my favorite minecraft tutorial
@JontyFake1920See it on YouTubeRocks rock.
@justinhess2747See it on YouTubeWhat about space mining? Please make a video about it, because I love how simply you explain the subjects
@I_love_number7See it on YouTube
4 more comments
Planned obsolescence is a big problem, especially with cell phones.
@Geodad478See it on YouTube1:00 There was an EXCELLENT exhibit on this exact subject at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. There's a case that has samples of every mineral/element in the average smart phone. 10/10 would recommend
@victoriaeads6126See it on YouTubeWaiting for Asteroid Mining to become a thing to give the Earth a break eventually.
@23uncbballSee it on YouTubeInformative and entertaining. Thanks.
@will_i_am_7205See it on YouTube
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The videos drawing views on CrashCourse right now
- Channel
- CrashCourse
- Subscribers
- 17,300,000 ▲ 100,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 4,706,830
- Videos published this week
- 2
- Video published
- October 22, 2026
- Video views so far
- 84,827
- Views on its first day
- 51,783
The numbers
Here is how CrashCourse's uploads and audience moved this week.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which of these is a mining method explained in Sage Magee's lesson?
Sage includes placer mining among the episode's four main extraction methods.