Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Chapter 5. Patterns in
Today’s Lecture: Nature: Minerals &
Prelude A: Rock Groups
Chemical bonding: Focus
on covalent bonds
Mineral polymorphs
Physical properties of
minerals
Common rock-forming
“silicate” minerals
Ionic Bonding
Example: Table Salt: Sodium (Na) and Chlorine (Cl)
Nucleus
Shared electrons
Factors that determine the internal
structure of minerals:
For example:
Higher pressure -> Denser packing of atoms -> Different mineral
Mineral Structure & Conditions of Formation
Color
Obvious, but often misleading. Slight impurities in a mineral
can change its color.
Luster
The appearance of light reflected from minerals.
Examples:
Resinous luster
Physical properties of minerals
Hardness
Very useful! Measures a mineral’s resistance to
scratching. We use Moh’s hardness scale (below)
for comparisons.
Crystal Form Reflects the Internal Arrangement of Atoms
Crystal form in halite
(salt; NaCl) is cubic
A law of mineralogy:
Constancy of angles between crystal faces
Crystal Form
The shape of a well-formed crystal reflects
directly the orderly internal arrangement of
Its constituent atoms.
Well-formed crystals that grow without
interference are called “euhedral”.
Quartz
(SiO2)
Anhedral crystals form when
crystals don’t have room
to grow and bump into each other
feldspar in an igneous rock
Quartz geode
Crystal terminations of
euhedral quartz
Asbestos
-group of silicate minerals that readily separate into fibers
that are: thin, flexible, heat resistant, chemically inert
Cleavage:
The tendency of a mineral to break along planes of weak bonding
in the crystal structure. The number and angles between cleavgae
faces are very useful properties for identification.
Calcite
(rhombs)
Halite
Mica (sheets) (cubes)
Conchoidal Fracture in Quartz
Bond strengths
are equal in all
directions.
No preferred
directions of
weakness.
Quartz does not
cleave, but breaks
along smooth,
curved, glassy
surfaces.
Called
“conchoidal”
(glassy)
fracture
Conchoidal fracture
in volcanic glass
Streak: Color of mineral
in its powdered form
CO2 bubbles
Important Non-silicate Minerals
Halides
Halite (Na, Cl: NaCl)
-> common table salt
Sulfates
Gypsum (Ca,S,O,H: CaSO4-H2O)
-> calcium sulfate + water, main ingredient of
plaster & other building materials
Oxides
Hematite (Fe, O: Fe2O3)
-> steel
Important Non-silicate Minerals
Carbonates
Silicon (Si)
Oxygen (O)
Question: What minerals would
you expect to be most abundant on Earth?
Percent of elements by WEIGHT
Earth’s Crust
Primarily Si & O followed in abundance by
Fe, Mg, Ca, Na, K, etc.
4-
4+ SiO4
Si
2-
O
2-
O Silicon tetrahedron has
2- An overall charge of -4
O
Silicates: The Common Rock-forming Minerals
Silicon atom
The Common rock-forming minerals
Silicates
Silicon-oxygen tetrahedra can be arranged into:
Definition of a rock:
A rock is:
rock
Prelude Chapter: Rocks
collection of
one or more
rock minerals
Prelude Chapter: Rocks
rock minerals
mineral
Prelude Chapter: Rocks
So far we have:
rock minerals
mineral
collection of
one or more
minerals
A collection
of one or more
types of atoms
Prelude Chapter: Rocks
Example: