About Minerals
Minerals are crystalline natural substances that formed as a result of geological actions. They have many uses in our everyday life, for example, nutritional supplements for health, gems in jewelry and industrial cutting tools. They range from soft to hard and brittle. There are clear crystals, minerals that come in different colors and minerals that are metals. Light can be reflected as a matte look or a glassy shine. Some minerals are very abundant, such as quartz, while others are rare, like platinum. But no matter what they look like on the outside, minerals form as a crystalline structure.
Identification
One way to see if something is a mineral is by looking at its "geometric shape." Does the shape have planes of symmetry? To understand symmetry, think about when you cut something in half (or into even smaller pieces). If the pieces you get look the same as each other, then they are symmetrical.
There are six symmetrical groupings (or systems): cubic, orthorhombic, tetragonal, monoclinic, triclinic and hexagonal. A seventh grouping, called trigonal, is similar to hexagonal.
There is also something called an axis, or a line, which is like an imaginary string running through a mineral's center. When a mineral is turned on this string, you can see "faces": two (a two-fold), three (three-fold), four (four-fold) or six (six-fold). But you will never see five faces.
What if by looking at a mineral you can't tell what it is? Then chemical makeup is used. Here are how minerals are classified by categories, with some examples of what you'd see in everyday life:
Native elements (gold)
Sulfides (pyrite, known as "fool's gold")
Oxides and hydroxides
Halides (table salt)
Carbonates
Nitrates and borates
Sulfates and chromates
Tungstates and molybdenates
Phosphates (fertilizer)
Arsenates and vanadates
Silicates (quartz)
The silicates are such a large grouping that they are subdivided in terms of structure.
Features
Minerals have different properties. An example is magnetite, a mineral that has the property of magnetism. With some other minerals, you can use long- or short-wave ultraviolet (UV) light to see a fantastic color change. This is caused as a result of metallic impurities within the minerals. These impurities absorb part of the UV light and in turn emit luminous energy that we see in the form of bright colors. The minerals' color change is called fluorescence.
Minerals can be hard or very soft. The Mohs scale is used to see how hard a mineral is. This is a scale of 1 to 10, where a mineral can scratch the surface of minerals lower on the scale. The diamond is the hardest.
Benefits
Numerous applications have been found for minerals. Their uses range from industrial things, like kyanite in car brakes, to mica and fluorite in toothpaste, to calcite and dolomite in laundry soap. And there are nutritional needs for animals and people.
The Facts
On average, 40 minerals are discovered and studied each year. This is done with the help of improved and refined mineralogical instruments. These instruments have also been used to redefine many minerals. Most of the sophisticated machinery is found at certain institutes and universities.
Significance
The International Mineralogical Association is an organization that helps keep people informed within the field of mineralogy. Since minerals are a major part of what makes up the earth, this field of study covers chemistry, physics and geology. Minerals are essential to life itself.
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