In this article, we will learn about the characteristics of minerals. There are nearly 4,000 different types of minerals that have been named. We have rock-forming minerals. We have no more than a few dozen of those and those make up most of the rocks of the Earth’s crust.
We have oxygen, silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, sodium, potassium, and magnesium. This is what it breaks down as to what it looks like in the crust.
Some general Characteristics of minerals
Consider you have an object and you wonder if it’s a mineral. Well, there are five characteristics. All minerals are solid. So this means that a mineral cannot exist in a gas or liquid state.
At any time it must be solid at all times. All minerals that have been made in a lab or some sort of controlled environment then that’s not going to be classified as a mineral because it wasn’t made by nature.
Now there are a couple of ways that minerals are made. We have a lava flow coming down a hill and as that lava flows down the hill you’ll notice that there’s a black film at the top of it and that black film there’s actually rock starting to form.
And the reason why the rock is starting to form is that the elements that were in the lava themselves started to cool and then crystallize to form minerals and then those minerals became bonded to one another to form rock.
When light salt gets dissolved in water and when that water evaporates it’ll leave the elements of sodium and chlorine behind and they will combine together to form a salt.
So some minerals can form through the process of evaporation. Now also if you go to a beach you’ll notice that the sand there at the main beach is made up of a bunch of fragments.
You’ll notice that there are some pieces that are shell fragments but you have other pieces or other fragments that are there because they are mineral fragments and again kind of similar to the ground that we talked about.
Depending on where you are the black could be biotite, mica, or a mineral called magnetite. So that’s our second characteristic of minerals that they are naturally made. The third characteristic of minerals is that they are inorganic.
Now inorganic made of materials that were living or once-living minerals have no form of plant or animal matter or are not created by processes done by plants or animals. So minerals are always inorganic. Minerals always have a definite chemical composition.
So if we take a look at our mineral here halide is made up of two elements. Minerals must have a crystalline structure. Now what a crystalline structure means is that the atoms inside of the mineral must have a repeating pattern.
So if we take a look at the NaCl atomic structure, the structure of the salt that we have here you’ll notice that there’s a repeating pattern of chlorine. Those atoms arrange themselves into a specific crystal pattern and thus giving the mineral its illustration.
You’ll notice that the halite atomic structure is naturally cubical and that’s because of the arrangement of the atoms inside the crystalline structure. In order to be classified as a mineral let’s recap really quickly. A mineral must be solid, it must be naturally made and found in nature.
They have to be inorganic and have a definite chemical composition which will ultimately give them a crystalline structure. So those are the five characteristics of minerals. Now let’s take a look at the two major categories of minerals. Minerals can be separated into two major categories.
They are called silicate minerals and also non-silicate minerals. So let’s take a look at the differences between the two. The main difference between a silicate mineral and a nonsilicon mineral is the presence of two elements.
Silicate minerals contain both silicon and oxygen. So in order to be a silicate mineral and must have those two elements inside of it. Not one or the other but it needs to have both since silicate minerals have both silicon and oxygen.
Just imagine what a nonsilicon mineral would have? A nonsilicon mineral can have either silicon or oxygen or have perhaps not even any one of those two. But they cannot have both of those elements in there.
Quartz is a mineral that’s found inside your watches that can power the watch. It can be part of jewelry or typically if someone buys a geode one of those hollow-out rocks that have crystals on the inside usually it’s quartz minerals in there.
Talc, the main component of baby powder is a silicon mineral. Because if you take a look at its chemical composition as magnesium, silicon, and oxygen again so the combination of silicon and oxygen makes it nonsilicon minerals.
One example of a nonsilicon mineral that you use every day is called graphite. Graphite is made up of carbon and only carbon. So there’s no silicon or oxygen in there. Gypsum is all over your house.
You’d have it in your walls because it’s what makes up the drywall or the sheetrock that is attached to the studs in your house. Halide is also known as salt.
So this is the mineral that you put on your food or makes pretzels and potato chips taste. So chemical composition it’s NaCl, sodium, and chlorine. So it has neither silicon nor oxygen in it.
Silicates
This is the most common mineral group and often contains silicon and oxygen tetrahedra. That’s where you have four oxygen ions surrounding a much smaller silicon ion. It’s pretty complex with a negative four charge to it.
So other silicate structures you’ll have that tetrahedra can join single chains, double chains, and sheets. First, we’re gonna look at the dark-colored silicates which are called Ferro magnesium minerals.
Feldspars
So this is the most common mineral group. You have two planes of cleavage. Potassium feldspar and you have plagioclase feldspar which is mostly sodium and calcium.
Quartz
It has a three-dimensional framework of tetrahedra. Most originated as products of chemical weathering.
You can also read: How are minerals formed naturally?
Different types of silicates
Some are light in color. They’re the non Ferromagnesian silicates and some are darker ones. In general, magnesium minerals are light in color shades. Some non-Ferro magnesium minerals like smoky quartz are dark in color.
Smoky quartz
It gets its smokiness because it has uranium in it. It’s very weakly radioactive. A lot of times you’ll get some chemical impurities that get mixed in with the chemical structure and that’s what changes the colors. That’s why you have smoky quartz. But you also have clear quartz.
Nonsilicate minerals
The major groups are oxides, sulfates, carbonate, hydroxides, and phosphates. Calcite is calcium carbonate and we have dolomite which is calcium magnesium carbonate. This primarily constitutes most of the sedimentary rocks.
Limestone and Dolostone
These are made up of calcium carbonate. If you add hydrochloric acid it’s gonna have a reaction to it more strongly with calcite than it will with dolomite.
Halite and gypsum
These are what we consider evaporite minerals and so these were formed as the water came in and there was a change in temperature of the water or water levels dropped in these minerals.
Gypsum is typically used in drywalls and a whole number of things and halite, of course, that’s salty so if you lick it’s gonna taste salty.
Read to know more about the Characteristics of minerals.
Economic minerals
We have many other non-silicate minerals that do have economic value. Hematite which is an ore, it’s typically used as pigment magnetite which is an ore of iron. It’s magnetic corundum which is a gemstone but it’s also abrasive.
Galena is the state mineral of Missouri and it’s an aura when we have a light which is an aura Zeke pyrite which is sulfur uric acid production.
Native elements
Some native elements are gold, copper, diamond, sulfur, graphite silver, and platinum.
Ore
It must be concentrated at or above its crystal abundance and the profitability maintained because of economic changes.