Warmup 12/8/15 What is a mineral? If you had to define it, how would you do so? Objective Tonight’s Homework To define and learn some basic properties of minerals Read section 9A. Do problems 1-8 on page 195

What are Minerals? So what are minerals? To be a mineral, something has to meet the following qualifications: 1 – It has to be naturally occurring, not man-made 2 – It has to be inorganic – non-living or from life 3 – It has to be able to form a crystalline structure 4 – It has to be a solid

What are Minerals? There are 3 major types of minerals: Compound Minerals: These are made from chemical compounds. This means they’re made from just one thing. This is a picture of fluorite. It’s made from a repeating pattern of 1 calcium atom and 2 fluorine atoms, repeated over and over. There’s nothing here in this mineral except those 2 elements.

What are Minerals? Native Minerals: These are naturally occurring deposits of pure metals. That means that these are made from just one element. No tricky combinations or other rules. Shown here is pure, native gold and pure, native aluminum.

What are Minerals? Mixtures of Minerals: This category includes most rocks. What’s a rock? Usually, it’s a random blending of several different minerals. Each of the little pieces you see here is a pure mineral. Most rocks are made of only a handful of different minerals, and we define different types of rocks based on the minerals it’s made of.

What are Minerals? What do we do with minerals? Humans actually have a ton of uses for the minerals we find. Metals The most obvious are the metals. Gold and silver are used in jewelry for their beauty and in electronics because they conduct electricity well. Platinum and copper are used to protect other things because neither one reacts with other elements very much.

What are Minerals? Nonmetals Diamonds are one of the most mined non-metals on earth. Most people think of them being white or pale blue, but the truth is that they can come in all colors. Rare colors are usually worth much more than common ones. These colors are caused by impurities in the diamond’s carbon.

What are Minerals? It takes intense pressure and heat to compress carbon into a diamond. Because of this, diamond is actually pretty hard to find. Most diamond occurs in diamond pipes, which are usually in hardened lava pipes from old volcanoes. Surprisingly, most diamond isn’t used for jewelry, but for industrial processes and drill bits since it’s so hard.

What are Minerals? Diamond isn’t the only thing mined, though. Sulfur is also mined extensively. It’s often found (and mined) near active volcanoes. When you smell a bad egg smell, that’s usually a sulfur compound.

What are Minerals? Sulfur is used by many countries to make sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid is used to make things like car batteries, but most of it is used to process other chemicals. In fact, how advanced and rich a country is often directly lines up with how much sulfuric acid they produce.

What are Minerals? Compound Minerals We classify compound minerals based on whether or not they contain a few key elements. Silicates: These make up 90% of the earth’s crust. Common minerals here are feldspar, quartz, opal, mica, garnet, and talc.

What are Minerals? Oxides: These are minerals made from oxygen combining with a metal. This includes bauxite and magnetite. Sulfides: These minerals contain sulfur. Some important ones here are galena, cinnabar, and pyrite.

What are Minerals? Dominion Over the Earth: Mining to get minerals is good, but it can cause a lot of damage to the earth. The picture on the left is of an underground salt mine, where tons of material has been excavated. The picture to the right is of a strip mine, where tons of material is simply ripped off the surface of the earth. Which is worse for the environment?

Exit Question What’s the difference between a mineral and a rock? Minerals are softer than rocks Rocks are softer than minerals Minerals are impure, rocks aren’t Minerals are made from just one substance, rocks aren’t There is no difference. None of the above