Download One Last Word About Minerals

One Last Word About Minerals
Unit A - Section 2.3
Minerals Have Many Uses in
Industry
Metals for cars and airplanes
 Quartz and feldspar for glass
 Fluorite and calcite for toothpaste
 Silver compounds for photographic film
 Mica and talc for paint
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Minerals Have Many Uses in Arts
Gemstones in jewelry
 Metals such as gold and silver for
decorative arts
 Mica and talc for paint

Minerals Form In Many Ways
Minerals develop when atoms of one or
more elements join together and crystals
begin to grow
 Temperature and pressure affect how
minerals form
 The elements in a location affect what
minerals form

Ways Minerals Form
Water evaporates
 Hot water cools
 Molten rock cools
 Heat and pressure cause changes
 Organisms produce minerals
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Water Evaporates
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Water has many
substances dissolved in it
When it evaporates,
minerals can form
For example, when salt
water evaporates, halite
remains
The mineral gypsum
often forms when water
evaporates
All depends on what was
dissolved in the water
Hot Water Cools
Gold dissolved in hot water can fill cracks
in rocks as the water cools
 Hot water within the crust moves
through rocks and can dissolve minerals
 When this water cools, the minerals
separate and become solid again

Molten Rock Cools
Many minerals grow from magma
 Magma is molten rock inside Earth
 When this cools, atoms join together to
form different minerals
 Minerals also form when lava cools
 Lava is molten rock that has reached the
Earth’s surface
 Quartz is an example that forms from
both!

Heat and Pressure Cause Changes
Heat and pressure cause new minerals to
form as bonds between atoms break and
join again
 Garnet can grow and replace chlorite and
quartz as their atoms combine in new
ways
 Graphite and diamond form from this as
well
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Organisms Produce Minerals
A few minerals are produced by living
things
 Oysters and clams produce calcite and
other minerals to form shells
 Who knows what apatite is?
 It is what your teeth are made of! You
produce this yourself!
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Many Minerals are Mined
Some minerals are near the surface,
others are deep underground
 Some are found at a range of depths
 Most minerals are combined with other
minerals in rocks
 An ore is a rock that contain enough of a
mineral to be mined for profit
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Surface Mining
Used for minerals at or near the Earth’s
surface
 Some examples are panning for gold
 Riverbed mining operations
 Other types of surface mining:
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◦ Strip Mining
◦ Open Pit Mining
Strip Mining/Open Pit Mining
Strip Mining - Miners strip away plants,
soil and unwanted rocks from surface and
use machine to dig out ore
 Remove surface layer of soil, use
explosives to break up underlying rock
and recover ore
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As they dig a deep hole or pit, to mine the
ore, they build roads up the side of the pit to
transport it out
 Copper and iron mining is commonly done
through this method
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Deep Mining
Needed when ore lies deep beneath the
Earth
 When ore is inside a mountain, miners
can cut a level passgae to reach the
mineral
 Miners dig a vertical passage to reach an
ore that lies underground in flat or under
a mountain
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