Minerals

What is a Mineral?

A mineral is a non-living, naturally made, chemical substance made up of two or more elements. Unlike elements, minerals do not make up everything in the world and can be broken down. Minerals can often be found in rocks. Usually, the rock contains different minerals compacted together. However, if you get lucky, you can find a chunk of one mineral. If you look in some rocks you can see there may be on side flat and another side rocky and different colors. If a rock looks like this than you can tell it has minerals in it.

What Role do Elements Play in the Formation of Minerals?

Two or more elements make up a mineral, certain elements together form a certain shape. Salt is an example, the two elements are chlorine and sodium. They make the cube shape.

What are Some Common Minerals?

The most common minerals are quartz, mica and feldspar. Most of the time these can be found in people's backyards. Some rare minerals are greenockite and sodalite. Greenockite was first found in Scotland in 1840.

How do Scientists Identify Minerals?

Scientists identify minerals by their physical properties. Such as color, streak, transparency, hardness, fracture, specific gravity, crystal form and luster. They also use Moh's Scale.

 

What is the Moh's Scale?

The Moh's scale is a scale that measures the hardness of a mineral. The hardness is tested by an object that can scratch that mineral. there are different ways to test the hardness, scratching, and the desnity. This is a table of the Mohs scale, there are ten minerals which can be scratched by different things. For example Diamond is the hardest mineral and talc is the softest mineral.

Hardness	Mineral	Absolute Hardness
1

(Mg3Si4O10(OH)2)

1
2	Gypsum (CaSO4·2H2O)	2
3	Calcite (CaCO3)	9
4	Fluorite (CaF2)	21
5

(Ca5(PO4)3(OH-,Cl-,F-))

48
6	Orthoclase Feldspar (KAlSi3O8)	72
7	Quartz (SiO2)	100
8	Topaz (Al2SiO4(OH-,F-)2)	200
9	Corundum (Al2O3)	400
10	Diamond(C)	1500

(This is a picture of a diamond.) (This is a picture of talc.)