[Music] hello welcome to geoo the purpose of this video is to go over the definition of a mineral if you're new to this Channel please consider subscribing so you don't miss out on any upcoming interviews from Professionals in geology Adventure or Rock hounding videos and plenty of instructional videos just like this one that being said let's talk minerals minerals are important parts of many of the things that you use now sometimes minerals are just beautiful and collectible and there's nothing wrong with that but let me give you a few examples of minerals that are useful there's one example called calite that's a very common mineral and it's used in a lot of things a couple of the things that it's used in are toothpaste and cement there's another mineral called gypsum and it's used to make sheetrock that a lot of you probably have on the walls in your home there's a mineral called bentonite clay which is a clay mineral that is used in ice cream to make it have the right kind of texture now this may be TMI but the point is minerals are everywhere okay so we find minerals everywhere but what really qualifies as a mineral the definition consists of five parts the first thing it must be naturally occurring it must be solid it must be inorganic must have a definite chemical formula and a crystallin structure now some of those are pretty clear what they are but let me dive into detail to make sure that you have a great understanding of exactly what qualifies as a mineral naturally occurring I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because I think it's pretty straightforward if you took humans off the Earth these things would still exist for example there are diamonds that you can mine that occur in nature that mother nature created but there's also diamonds that we fabricate in factories to use for drilling and other applications so the diamonds that are synthetic are not considered minerals since they are human made Solid I don't think I need to spend any time on this we all know what a solid is [Music] right okay maybe not but most likely you know what a solid is so let's move on in organic for our purposes this simply means that it is not derived from life for example one of the reasons that coal is not a mineral is because coal is formed from plant debris that collects usually in swampy areas and piles up over time plants are a form of life and so minerals cannot be derived from something living definite chemical formula now just as an example I bet if you took a look at the water in this glass you could tell me exactly what its chemical formula is the the chemical formula of water is H2O okay so it has a definite chemical formula but what's one reason that we've learned already that makes water not a mineral that's right it's liquid it's not a solid okay so some examples of minerals in their chemical formulas are calite which is made of calcium carbon and oxygen or calcium carbonate pyite which is made of iron and sulfur Olivine which is made made of magnesium and iron two of those and silicon and oxygen so those are some examples of minerals and their chemical formulas crystalline structure crystalline structure simply means that the compounds mentioned in the chemical formulas above arrange themselves in very specific ways with each other so you may be able to relate to this if you've ever looked closely at a snowflake you'll notice that it has a very specific way that the hydrogen and oxygen compounds bind themselves with other hydrogen and oxygen compounds to make a specific shape so that's an example of a crystallin structure in fact there's actually some minerals that are the same in every way except for the crystallin structure and these are called polymorphs graphite and Diamond are a good example of this both graphite and Diamond are made of pure carbon but graphite is one of the softest minerals and is used in lubrication and other things like like that and diamonds on the other hand are the hardest mineral so the difference lies in the crystallin structure how the carbon atoms arrange themselves and stack themselves together all right let's go ahead and test your knowledge of the definition of a mineral on the screen I have six different things that I want you to try to figure out is it a mineral or is it not so the top left is just a glass that you might have in your kitchen the top middle is just supposed to be oil coming out of the ground the top right is supposed to be obsidian or natural glass that might come from a volcano the bottom left is quartz the bottom middle is wood and the bottom right is supposed to be frozen water not liquid water but frozen water all right so check the description below to see if you got your answers right and leave a comment to let me know how you did or if you have any further questions thank you so much for watching I hope this helps you understand the definition of a mineral a little bit better if you have any instructional videos that you would like to see please let me know in a comment below and make sure to check out some of my other videos while you're here have a great day