MINERALS: Building

Blocks of Rocks
 Learning Objectives
• Described how much minerals are part of
our daily lives
• Described minerals as a life-long hobby
(gemstone collectors)
• Described the importance and use of
minerals to human development
• Developed a systematic way of
identifying minerals
• Earth crust is a source for a variety of useful
and essential minerals
• Practically every manufactured product
contains materials obtained from minerals
• What are example of mineral
and its uses?
• Answer the following questions
1. What is mineral?
2. What are examples of mineral and its
uses?
3. Why minerals are important?
What is a mineral?

• Any naturally occurring, inorganic solid that

possesses an orderly crystalline structure and
a definite chemical composition.
Based on our definition of a mineral,
Group Activity
• Categorize the given items as “MINERALS” or
“NON-MINERALS”

You are given 5 minutes

Wood
Gold
Fossil
Topaz
Bones
Granite
Quartz
Pearl
Talc
Iceberg
Diamond
Coal
Rock Salt
• Ice is listed as a mineral according to IMA
What are the uses of mineral?
What is copper used for?
How about gold?
What about talc?
Mineral is…
• Any naturally occurring, inorganic solid that
possesses an orderly crystalline structure and
a definite chemical composition.
What is a Rock?
• Any solid mass of mineral, or an aggregate of
many minerals that occurs naturally as part of
the planet.
• Limestone, granite, shale
Properties of Minerals
• Primary Diagnostic Properties
1. Luster
2. Hardness
3. Crystal Form
4. Color
5. Streak
6. Cleavage or Fracture
7. Specific gravity
Luster
• Is the appearance or quality of light reflected
from the surface of a mineral
• Metallic luster – generally opaque and exhibit
a resplendent shine similar to a polished metal
• Nonmetallic luster - vitreous (glassy),
adamantine (brilliant/diamond-like), resinous,
silky, pearly, dull (earthy), greasy, etc
Luster
 Hardness
• A measure of resistance of a mineral to
abrasion or scratching.
• Standard hardness scale is
the Mohs scale
Moh’s scale of Hardness
• designed by German geologist/mineralogist
Friedrich Mohs in 1812
• The test compares the resistance of a mineral
relative to the 10 reference minerals with
known hardness. It is simply determining the
hardness of a mineral by scratching them with
common objects of known hardness (e.g.
copper coin -3.0-3.5).
PROS CONS

The scale is qualitative

Easy to do the test and not quantitative

Can be done anywhere, anytime Cannot be used to test

as long as the accurate hardness of
place is not dark industrial materials

Mohs scale is highly relevant for

field geologists
to roughly identify minerals using
scratch kits

Can be done without or few kits –

handy
Color
• An obvious feature but an unreliable
diagnostic property
Color
• Maybe a unique identifying property of
certain minerals (e.g. malachite – green,
azurite – blue).
• some minerals can exhibit a range of colors;
the mineral quartz for example, can be pink
(rose quartz), purple (amethyst), orange
(citrine), white (colorless quartz) etc
Streak
• Is the color of the mineral in its powdered
form which is a more reliable indication of
color.
• Streak of a mineral does not vary
• Note that the color of a mineral could be
different from the streak.
• For example, pyrite (FeS2) exhibits golden color
(hence the other term of pyrite which is Fool’s
Gold) but has a black or dark gray streak.
• Streak is a better diagnostic property as
compared to color.
• Streak is inherent to almost every mineral.
• Color maybe unreliable for identification as
impurities within the minerals may give the
minerals a different color.
Crystal Form
• Is the external expression of a mineral’s
orderly internal structure of atoms.
• Examples include prismatic, tabular, bladed,
platy, reniform, needle-like and equant
(blocky/cubic).
• A mineral that do not have a crystal structure
is described as amorphous.
Try to identify the crystal forms
Cleavage and Fracture
• The tendency of the mineral to break along
planes of weak bonding
• Minerals that do not exhibit cleavage when
broken are said to fracture.
• When minerals break evenly in more than one
direction, cleavage is described by the number
of cleavage directions and the angle(s)
between planes (e.g. cleavage in 2 directions
at 90 degrees to each other).
• Left photo shows one cleavage direction
(biotite). Middle photo has cleavage in 2
directions at 90° (orthoclase). Right photo has
3 cleavage directions at 74° (calcite).
Specific Gravity
• It is the ratio of the weight of a mineral to the
weight of an equal volume of water.
• A bucket of silver (SG 10) would weigh 10
times more than a bucket of water (SG 1).
• It is a measure to express the density (mass
per unit volume) of a mineral. The specific
gravity of a mineral is numerically equal to
density.
 Other Properties of Minerals
• Taste
• Smell
• Malleability
• Feel
• Magnetism
• Double refraction
• Chemical reaction to hydrochloric acid
What is the other way to group minerals
together?
…is by CHEMICAL COMPOSITION (a more stable
and less ambiguous basis for classification of
minerals)
 Mineral Groups
• Silicate minerals
– Contains oxygen and silicon atoms as their
fundamental building block
• Nonsilicate minerals
– Make up only about 8 % of the Earth’s crust but
most of it are important economically
Silicate Minerals
 Nonsilicate Minerals
Mineral Groups Mineral Name Economic Use
Carbonates Calcite, Dolomite Portland cement, lime
Halides Halite, Flourite, Common salt, Hydroflouric
Sylvite acid production, Fertilizer
Oxides Hematite, Ore of iron, gemstone,
magnitite, solid form of water
corundum, ice
Sulfides Galena, Ore of lead, ore of zinc,
Sphalerite, Pyrite, sulfuric acid production,
Chalcopyrite, ore of copper, ore of
Cinnabar mercury
Sulfates Gypsum, Plaster, Drilling Mud
Anhydrite, Barite
Basic uses of common minerals
SHORT QUIZ!
• Can we imagine now that
most of the materials we
usually used uses minerals?
• Minerals are NON-RENEWABLE
resource, as they take of thousands to
million of years to form.
• Increasing consumption and continued
extraction of ores lead to increasing cost of
extraction and a sharp decrease in their
quality and quantity.
• CONSERVE mineral resources as it
feared that with this rate of
consumption the day is not far away
when most of the metallic and non-
metallic minerals reserves and fossil
deposits will be fully exhausted.
• HOW CAN WE HELP CONSERVE
MINERAL?
• 3’Rs can be used – REDUCE, REUSE
and RECYCLE
 Assignment
• Think of 5 minerals and their common uses
and identify the specific property(ies) that
made them for that purpose (e.g. graphite,
having a black streak and hardness of 1-2, is
used in pencils due to its ability to leave marks
on paper and other objects).
THANK YOU 