Minerals are naturally occurring solid substances found on Earth with well-defined chemical composition. While most minerals consist of multiple elements combined together into compounds, some varieties, known as native minerals, exist solely as one element.
Minerals can be identified by their color, luster, streak, hardness and other properties. Furthermore, their crystal structures such as plagioclase feldspar’s regular dark and light patterns (reminiscent of zebra stripes) allow classification.
Physical Properties
Geologists and mineralogists utilize several physical properties of minerals to identify them, such as their cleavage (the way in which a mineral breaks), habit (its general shape, such as octahedral, equant, bladed or globular), fracture patterns (irregular breakage that results from no cleavage planes), and fracture patterns. Minerals may also exhibit properties like being malleable or tenacious or flexible or elastic depending on its chemical make up and fracture patterns resultantly from no cleavage planes resulting in irregular breakages between planes of breakage).
Many minerals exhibit unique chemical reactions, like calcite’s bubbly response to weak hydrochloric acid solutions. Other common physical properties of minerals include their hardness (measured on the Mohs scale), luster and color.
Minerals exhibit many fascinating properties, from magnetism and luminescence to magnetism and luminescence. According to the International Mineralogical Association, minerals are defined as substances with regular structures and stable chemical composition at room temperature; this excludes amorphous substances like meridianiite which is an naturally occurring hydrate of magnesium sulfate; as well as complex crystalline structures with variable compositions, such as Mackinawite.
Chemical Properties
Chemical properties of minerals involve how their vibrational atoms alter crystal structures. While chemical properties can be useful diagnostic tools, accurate mineral identification requires additional methods like X-ray identification.
Some minerals possess distinctive textures that help mineralogists identify them more easily, such as gypsum’s smooth and soapy feel; talc has waxy feel related to its luster; while other minerals, such as pyrite (fool’s gold) and chalcopyrite, have metallic sheen or streaks.
Minerals also exhibit unique aromas that provide insights into their chemical makeup. Other key properties include heat conduction properties that depend on how tightly their atoms are packed together – metals are excellent thermal conductors; reactive minerals include those which react with acids while inert minerals don’t react at all; some minerals have even the capacity to change chemically into other types of matter such as iron rusting away or chromium turning to plastic.
Economical Properties
Metal-rich minerals (such as silver, gold and native copper) as well as their metal sulfides counterparts pyrite (FeS2) and galena (PbS) can be economically valuable. Their cubic structures often make these gems desirable while others possess less regular crystal structures.
Some minerals are ornamental in nature and used as gemstones such as diamond, ruby and sapphire. Other minerals have industrial applications. Americans consume 24 tons of industrial minerals each year such as salt (halite), talc for paper products and cosmetics use, gypsum used in wallboard manufacturing processes and magnesia that promotes plant growth.
Economic value of minerals depends on their ability to be mined profitably. Geologists seek out places where heavy minerals concentrate to form ore deposits; ore deposits may contain either metal-rich or non-metal-rich elements, depending on where gravity forces exert pressure upon them; placer deposits often form where streams slow down on point bars or braided streams before flowing alluvially fans and alluvium fans.
Environmental Properties
Minerals play an essential role in Earth’s ecosystems and environment, from purifying its waters to soil formation, carbon sequestration, climate regulation and weather regulation. Furthermore, minerals act as natural catalysts and support various geochemical reactions such as sedimentary rock formation.
Physical and chemical properties of minerals serve as the basis of identification. Most minerals have distinctive colors, while many also possess other features which aid identification – for instance, coarse samples of calcite react with dilute hydrochloric acid to produce bubbling or “effervescence”, helping identify their mineral.
Certain minerals attract magnets, making them useful tools in field or laboratory use to separate different rocks. For instance, hematite attracts magnetic attraction while quartz does not. Minerals also possess unique environmental attributes, like perlite’s ability to significantly decrease heat transmission through walls in masonry buildings; additionally they’re commonly used as filter media in wastewater filtration plants to remove TSS and insolubles from industrial wastewater streams. Dicalite Management Group knows of two such minerals–perlite and diatomaceous earth are two such materials familiar to Dicalite Management Group that they employ as filter media used as filters to remove TSS and insolubles from industrial wastewater discharge streams.
