This is Unit 4, Lesson 1, Characteristics of Minerals. Our learning target for today is I can describe the five characteristics of all minerals, and I can determine whether an object is a mineral and explain why. So my success criteria, student can list the five characteristics that all minerals have in common, and student can determine whether something is a mineral and provide reasoning for their answers.
So basically today we're going to be looking at what minerals are and what makes something a mineral versus not a mineral. Here's some examples of minerals here. We have gold, we have galena. So characteristics of minerals, when we look at this idea of characteristics, we're asking ourselves how do we determine if something is a mineral or not?
So why is one thing a mineral and why is something else not a mineral? In order to be considered a mineral, an object must meet all five of the following criteria. And just to note, all rocks are made of minerals. So we're starting a new unit on rocks and minerals. In order to really understand how rocks are, or the characteristics of rocks, we need to understand what they're made of first.
So we're going to go through all five of these criteria one at a time. First one is a mineral is naturally occurring. That means that they're not manmade.
So if we look at the image here, we have a lot of different objects. Things that would be naturally occurring would be things like a feather, a shell, a rock, another shell, wood, a jawbone. All of those are naturally occurring.
Things that are not naturally occurring would be manmade things. So like this magnet, pen, matches. Now some of these things have Objects in them that are also naturally occurring.
So for example, maybe a paintbrush the brush part might have hair from an animal in it, but the paintbrush itself is not naturally occurring because it was created. The second characteristic of mineral is that it is a solid. It cannot be a liquid.
It cannot be a gas. It must be a solid in the phases of matter. Then we have number three. A mineral has a definite chemical composition.
So I want to look here at this fluorite drawing here. Fluorite is made of calcium. So it's CaF2. That means for every calcium atom there are two fluorine atoms. That is a definite chemical composition.
This mineral fluorite is always made of one calcium atom per every two fluorine. atoms. And it's also arranged in an orderly pattern. So if you look at this drawing here, you see that they're kind of creating a pattern. It's organized.
It's not random all over the place. They're not just a jumbled mess. They're in an orderly pattern.
We obviously can't really see this looking at a mineral. So when we think about whether something's a mineral or not, we're going to assume that these two are correct. And we're really going to look at the other visible characteristics and the last one is a mineral is inorganic meaning it was never alive okay so it's not a dinosaur it's not a fossil it is a diamond so diamonds are minerals they're inorganic they're created from carbon that's undergone a lot of pressure dinosaurs are organic So we're going to go through a couple examples of this mineral or not idea. So here on the left, or on the right, we have pearls. So we want to think about, are these minerals or not?
So it is a solid. It meets that criteria. I'm going to assume that it has a definite chemical composition and...
I'm also going to assume that its atoms are arranged in an orderly pattern. So we went through three of them already. The next thing is it is it naturally occurring?
Yes, pearls are naturally occurring. The last question we have to ask ourselves is, is it inorganic, meaning it was never alive? Well for a pearl, pearls are created by oysters. which are living organisms, which means that pearls are not minerals because although they are naturally occurring, they are also organic. So we'll do another example.
Here is halite. OK, this is table salt, sodium chloride. Is this a mineral or not?
So we'll go through our list again. Is it naturally occurring? Yes.
Is it a solid? Yes. Does it have a definite chemical composition?
Yes, an ACL. Does it have an orderly pattern? I'm going to say yes.
And is it inorganic, meaning never alive? Yes, table salt is not alive. It is not a living thing. Therefore, it is inorganic and it is a mineral. Now we're going to talk about how minerals are categorized.
So they are categorized into groups based on their chemical and physical properties. Chemical properties are going to be the types of elements that make them up. Physical properties are going to be things that are observable like color and hardness.
Some of our mineral groups are silicates, carbonates, sulfides, oxides, sulfates, phosphates, and halides. And if you look here In this image, it tells you which is which. So silicates contains silicon and oxygen.
This makes up 90% of Earth's crust. So 90% of Earth's crust is made up of silicate minerals. When you get into silicate minerals, then they're also categorized based on their structure. We're not going to worry about it too much.
Carbonate, sulfides, all of these contain different elements. Some of the most common minerals are quartz, mica, feldspar, and calcite. And then I just want you guys to think a little bit about some uses for minerals.
So minerals can be used in electronics, they can be used in makeup or cosmetics, they can be used in transportation and building materials. So some examples that are in here for electronics, you can use mica, also quartz. This is a really old computer, but quartz is used in computers. You have coal used in electricity, things like hematite and iron for cars. So although you may not really realize it, but looking around you, many of the things that you use every day are made of minerals.
Also, minerals are things that are required for your bodies to go strong. So sometimes you may see... food, like especially cereal, that'll stay fortified with minerals. It's the same thing.
They're still minerals. It's in small quantities, and some foods are fortified or have added minerals to them to make them more nutritious. So our learning target for today was I can describe the five characteristics of all minerals. I can determine whether an object is a mineral and explain why.
Student can list the five characteristics that all minerals have in common and student can determine whether something is a mineral and provide reasoning for their answers.