1. Let’s look deeper at our Geosphere and what it gives us: Minerals and You
“Mining Minerals Matters in Your Everyday Life” (5 min.)
Modern Mining and You (first 15 min)
The Cycle of Mineral Collection and Mineral Uses

2. Separate/Group the minerals by properties:
Use minerals #1 - #39
Sort into 3 or 4 piles by similar characteristics
How are they alike?
How did you decide to sort them?
Color, luster, hardness, shape, weight,

3. Minerals: the building blocks of rocks pgs. 96-97
What are the 5 characteristics that make a mineral a mineral? All minerals are:
Solid
Natural (found in nature)
Inorganic (never were living)
have an orderly internal structure of atoms and crystals*
have a definite Chemical composition (chemical formula)
*Mineraloid - lacks an orderly internal structure

4. Mineral or Not??? Ruby Mercury Concrete Salt Cubic zirconia Sugar Ice
YES
NO, liquid
No, man-made
NO, synthetic
NO, organic
Metalloid, no crystalline structure
Ruby
Mercury
Concrete
Salt
Cubic zirconia
Sugar
Ice
Pearl

5. Minerals are composed of Elements
Where did all the elements that make-up minerals originate? Stars! Show video clip
Most Astounding Fact Neil DeGrass Tyson

6. Common minerals Some minerals are made from 1 element like:
sulfur, copper, gold, iron , silver, carbon
But most minerals are …Compounds
Salt (NaCl) Calcite (CaCO3) Quartz (sand) (SiO2)
Some are elements: sulfur, copper, gold, diamond
There are over 4000 minerals, but only about a 20+ are common in the Earth’s crust and make-up all the rocks

7. Which Elements Make up the Earth’s crust (geosphere)? THE TOP 8
#1 Oxygen
#2 Silicon
#3 Aluminum
#4 Iron
#5 Calcium
#6 Sodium
#7 Potassium
#8 Magnesium

8. Take #44 out of the box The ROCK Granite
How many different colors are in granite?
Find minerals # 6 #7 #26,
So, a rock by definition is…
A solid mass of one or more minerals
mixed together in varying quantities.

9. Except….. Limestone rock (#58) is made
of only ONE mineral: calcite (#3)
Obsidian (#51), which is glass made of only
ONE mineral – quartz (#7)
Coal, which is organic matter.

10. Earth Science, 11e
Bellringer: What specific characteristics help us to identify certain minerals?

11. Mineral Box Scavenger Hunt
Which mineral…
1. Looks like glass ____
2. Smells like rotten eggs ____
3. Flecks of gold ____
4. Is magnetic ____
5. Is soft like powder ____
6. Can write like a pencil ____
7. Tastes salty ____
8. Is heavy like lead _____
9. Dried blood-red color ____
10. Peels into thin sheets ____
#7 quartz
#31 sulfur
#22 pyrite
#13 magnetite
#1 talc
graphite
#18 halite
#11 galena
hematite
#23/24 mica

12. Mineral Identification
Purpose:
To construct methods to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze characteristics
Identify specific minerals
Group them by similar physical and chemical characteristics
Research their use as Earth’s resources
Recyclable materials
Renewable resources

13. To construct methods to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze characteristics Day 2

14. Define the characteristic
Table 1
Table 2
Table 3
Table 4
Table 5
Table 6
Table 7
Mineral
Specimen Number
Color
Luster (Pg 105)
Light
Interaction (Pg 107)
Streak
Color (Pg 105)
Hardness
Number (Pg 106)
Cleavage
Or Fracture (Pg 105)
Soluble
in water (Research)
Solubility
in acid (Research)
Other Properties:
Magnetism,
Fluorescence (Pg 107)
Mineral name
page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Each table is assigned a different characteristic.
Define the characteristic
Describe the characteristic qualitatively (words)
Determine if and how it could be quantitatively measured.

15. Presentation of Test Procedures
Groups explain the scale, rank, grouping of the characteristic to the class

16. Identify Minerals
Use the data table of minerals and their qualitative and quantitative characteristics to identify the minerals by matching their characteristics to a table of known minerals
(ESS text pg )