Prepared by

Mrs. Amany Adel

Gaber Hussien
Teacher of Earth
science of stem
Menoufia
Weeks: Week 02 - Week 04
ES.1.02:
Examine common minerals and
identify them and differentiate
them from other common
minerals.
In this session student should be able to:

•1. Know Minerals are homogeneous solid earth materials

. 2 Recognize that mineral be considered a mineral, a material

must meet five criteria.
. 3 Identify The Chemistry and Structure of Minerals

. 4 Identify Mineral Formation ways

Minerals
What is a Mineral?

Minerals are everywhere! Scientists have identified more than 4,000 minerals in Earth’s crust, although
the bulkof the planet is composed of just a few.

A mineral possesses the following qualities:

• It must be solid.

• It must be crystalline, meaning it has a repeating arrangement of atoms.

• It must be naturally occurring.

• It must be inorganic.

• It must have a specific chemical composition.

 • Minerals can be identified by their physical properties, such as hardness, color, luster (shininess), and odor.

• The most common laboratory technique used to identify a mineral is X-ray diffraction (XRD), a technique
that involves shining an X-ray light on a sample, and observing how the light exiting the sample is bent.

• XRD is not useful in the field, however.

• The definition of a mineral is more restricted than you might think at first. For example, glass is made
of sand, which is rich in the mineral quartz.

• But glass is not a mineral, because it is not crystalline. Instead, glass has a random assemblage of
molecules.

• What about steel? Steel is made by mixing different metal minerals like iron, cobalt, chromium,
vanadium, and molybdenum, but steel is not a mineral because it is made by humans and therefore is
not naturally occurring.

• However, almost any rock you pick up is composed of minerals. Below we explore the qualities of
minerals in more detail.
Crystalline Solid

• Minerals are "crystalline" solids.

• A crystal is a solid in which the atoms are arranged in a regular, repeating pattern.

• Notice that in Figure 4.67the green and purple spheres, representing sodium and chlorine, form a
repeating pattern.

• In this case, they alternate in all directions.

Inorganic

Sodium ions (purple balls) bond with chlo- ride ions (green balls) to make table salt
(halite).

• All of the grains of salt that are in a salt shaker have this crystalline structure.

Organic substances are the carbon-based compounds made by living creatures and include
proteins, carbohydrates, and oils

• Inorganic substances have a structure that is not characteristic of living bodies.

• Coal is made of plant and animal remains. Is it a mineral?

• Coal is a classified as a sedimentary rock, but is not a mineral.

Naturally Occurring

• Minerals are made by natural processes, those that occur in or on Earth.

• A diamond created deep in Earth’s crust is a mineral, but a diamond made in a laboratory by humans
is not.

• Be careful about buying a laboratory-made “diamond” for jewelry.

• It may look pretty, but it’s not a diamond and is not technically a mineral.
Chemical Composition

• Nearly all (98.5%) of Earth’s crust is made up of only eight elements –oxygen, silicon, aluminum, iron,
calcium, sodium, potassium, and magnesium –and these are the elements that make up most minerals.

• All minerals have a specific chemical composition.

• The mineral silver is made up of only silver atoms and diamond is made only of carbon atoms, but most
minerals are made up of chemical compounds.

• Each mineral has its own chemical formula. Table salt (also known as halite), pictured in Figure 4.67, is
NaCl (sodium chloride).

• Quartz is always made of two oxygen atoms (red) bonded to a silicon atom (grey), represented by the
chemical formula SiO2 ( Figure 4.68).
• In nature, things are rarely as simple as in the lab, and so it should not come as a surprise that some
minerals have a range of chemical compositions.

• One important example in Earth science is olivine, which always has silicon and oxygen as well as some
iron and magnesium, (Mg, Fe)2SiO4.
Types of Minerals

• In the Investigate, you first observed the properties of crystals and mineral samples.

• Crystals are solid materials.

• The particles of crystals are arranged in an orderly, repeating pattern.

• You then used observations and tests to identify minerals.

• Minerals have been important to humans for a long time.

• Early humans used red hematite and black manganese oxide to make cave paintings.

• People in the Stone Age made tools out of hard, fine-grained rocks.

• In the Bronze Age, people discovered how to combine copper and tin from minerals
into a metallic mixture (alloy) called bronze.
• Later, in the Iron Age, people made tools of iron.

• Iron is contained in minerals like hematite (Fe2O3) and magnetite (Fe3O4).

• Fe is the chemical symbol for iron.

• Today, minerals are used in thousands of ways.

• Feldspar is used to make porcelain.

• Calcite is used to make cement.

• Iron and manganese, together with small amounts of several other metals, make steel
that is used to make buildings, trains, cars, and many other things.

• Gypsum is used to make plaster and wallboard.

• These are just a few examples of how minerals are used in your daily lives.
Figure 1 The minerals red hematite and black manganese oxide were
used by early humans to make cave drawings.
• Man has known and utilized minerals since a very long time, Paleolithic
man used chert to make knives and spears to kill animals to feed on them
and to defend himself.

• He also used colorful minerals, e.g. yellow and red ochre such as
heamatite and lemonite to colour the walls of the caves he lived in, and
after knowing fire he widely used clay to manifacturing hard ceramic (pots)

Ancient Egyptians have also used coloured minerals and stone for
ornamentation, such as those of amethyst, Malachite, emeralds and turquoise.
• Now minerals are used in a lot of industries as calcite used in cement industry,

• quartz in glass industries,

• magnetite and hematite in steel industries which used in building, car industries
and railways

• and feldspar used in making ceramic

• They also extracted metals such as copper and gold from their ores and shaped
them into different objects.
 To be considered a mineral, a material must meet five criteria.

• Minerals are solid, not gas or liquid.

• Minerals are inorganic. That means they are not alive and never
have been.

• Minerals occur naturally. They are not manufactured.

• Minerals have definite chemical compositions.

• These can be expressed as chemical formulas, such as SiO2, Ag, or

Fe2O3.
• Minerals have a regular three-dimensional arrangement of atoms.

• This is called a crystal structure.

• Some minerals, called native-element minerals, consist of only one element. (See Figure
2.)

Figure 2 Copper is a native-

element mineral.
• A good example is gold (Au), which is often found as nuggets or pieces of pure gold not
combined with any other element.

• Copper (Cu), iron (Fe), and silver (Ag) are other native elements.

• However, most minerals are combinations of elements.

• For example, quartz, with the formula SiO2, is made of silicon and oxygen. (See Figure 3.)

Figure 3 Quartz is a
mineral composed
of the elements
silicon and oxygen.
 • Calcite (CaCO3) is made of calcium, carbon, and oxygen.

• Rocks are naturally occurring collections or aggregates of mineral grains.

• Some rocks consist of only one mineral.

• However, most contain several different kinds of minerals.

• Sometimes you can see the mineral grains, and other times they are too small to see
without being magnified.

• Granite consists mostly of large crystals of feldspar, quartz, and mica, as shown in
Figure 4.

• Basalt consists mostly of tiny crystals of feldspar and pyroxene.

 Figure 4 Granite is a rock composed of
several different types of minerals.

• Rocks that contain valuable minerals are called ores.

• To remove the valuable minerals, the ore first has to be mined.

• Two methods of mining include surface mining and underground mining.

.
• After being mined, the valuable mineral is then separated from the rest of the ore.

• This is done through processes like crushing, sieving, melting, or settling through a liquid.

• Most metals and many important nonmetals are refined from ores.
• Valuable minerals are not found evenly in Earth’s crust.

• Finding new deposits is an important first step in mining.

• The mining company needs to understand the properties of the minerals and the ores
that contain them.

The Chemistry and Structure of Minerals

• As you saw in the Investigate, minerals can be very different from one another.

• The reason for this is that all minerals have a specific chemical makeup.

• Minerals consist of atoms of one or more chemical elements

• . Atoms are the smallest unit of a chemical element that has all the element’s
properties.
• Each chemical element has different chemical and physical properties.

• The atoms in minerals occur in a regular three-dimensional arrangement. (See Figure 5 on

the next page.)

• The atoms in almost all minerals are in the form of ions. Ions are atoms that have an
electric charge.

• This charge is due to electrons being added to or removed from the atom.

• Electrons are particles that orbit around the nucleus of the atom.

• They have a negative charge. The ions in a mineral are packed together in a way
that brings the ions as close together as possible.

• As a result, positively charged ions are in close contact with negatively charged ions.
Objects with unlike electric charges are attracted to each other.
• These forces of attraction hold the mineral together as a solid.

Figure 5 This expanded view

of halite (sodium chloride)
shows the orderly three-
dimensional arrangement of
sodium and chlorine atoms.
 Summary

• A mineral is an inorganic, crystalline solid.

• A mineral is formed through natural processes and has a definite chemical composition.

• Minerals can be identified by their characteristic physical properties, such as crystalline structure,
hardness, density, breakage, and color.
 Geo Words
• crystal: a solid material, whose atoms, molecules, or ions are arranged in an orderly,
repeating pattern.

• mineral: a naturally occurring, inorganic, solid material that consists of atoms that
are arranged in a regular pattern and has characteristic chemical composition,
crystal structure, and physical properties.

• native-element mineral: a mineral consisting of only one element.

• element: a substance that cannot be broken down into simpler substances by

chemical means; an element is composed of atoms with identical atomic
numbers.

• rocks: naturally occurring collections of mineral grains.

• aggregate: a collection of particles of a material.

• ores: rocks that contain valuable minerals.

• atom: the smallest unit of a chemical element that has all the element’s properties; it
consists of a nucleus surrounded by electrons.

• ion: an atom with one or more electrons removed (or added), giving it a positive
(or negative) charge.
• electron: a subatomic particle with a negative electric charge, which orbits around the
nucleus of the atom.