EARTH MATERIALS: ROCKS AND MINERALS

Minerals: What the heck are they?

BASIC DEFINITION
• Basic definition of a mineral:
• Naturally occurring
• solid
• inorganic material (not from living things)
• Fixed chemical formula
• Specific atomic structure; often in crystal form
• 1000s of known minerals
• Make up rocks (usually a group of minerals together)
• Examples – halite, gold, diamond
• More than 90 percent of minerals are made up of oxygen
and silicon
• Most minerals are compounds of various elements – top 8
make up 98.5 percent of the crust’s mass
DIFFERENTIATING MINERALS
•Crystal Form
•Luster – how well reflects light
•Hardness – can it be scratched? MOHS scale
•Cleavage and Fracture – how does it break?
•Streak – colour when broken and powdery
•Colour
•Texture – what does it feel like
•Specific Gravity – ratio od mass compared to water
•Special properties – magnetic, double refraction etc.
MAGMA PROCESS: MINERALS FORMATION
PRESSURE FORMATION
MINERALS FORMATION
• Previous two images show the main way in which minerals form
• First – out of the magma itself – Rate of magma cooling will determine crystal form
• Intrusive and extrusive – example – diorite

• Second – pressure process – subjected to temperature and pressure minerals can begin
to break down chemically; minerals can change even in a solid state – example –
hornblende schist
CRYSTAL STRUCTURE
• Crystal is a regular geometric solid with smooth surfaces called
crystal faces
• All crystals are orderly structures
• The orderly arrangement of ions, molecules or atoms
determines the shape of the crystal
• Each type of mineral has its own crystal form
• Example – quartz – consists of silicon and oxygen atoms
forming a six sided crystal
• Angle at which crystal faces meet is characteristic of the mineral
and helps define it
SIX CRYSTAL SYSTEMS