Minerals are encountered every day in daily life, from the quartz of watch you wear to gemstones on your jewelry. Minerals are also used in many industries and have been mined out since long time ago. There are many minerals have been discovered, some of them are famous of their unique, size, price, etc. One of the famous minerals is Cullinan Diamond, the largest uncut diamond (hardest mineral) ever discovered and crafted into The Royal Sceptre and Imperial State Crown of Great Britain.
Here are 5 natures of mineral that you may not realize before:
- Occurring naturally
As you know, minerals are not something that human can make and can only be unearthed from mineral reserves. Minerals must be found occurring naturally, even there are some lab products resemble minerals (not the true minerals). There are substances called mineraloids that looks like mineral. Mineraloids are not minerals because they don’t satisfy all the requirements of minerals.
- Inorganic
Minerals don’t belong to any class of organic compound. Almost all known minerals come from inorganic processes. Both organic and inorganic substances contain carbon, but in inorganic substances, the carbon typically bonds with elements other than hydrogen and doesn’t form long chains.
- Solid
Minerals are solid because the ions and charged atoms bond together to form mineral. The molecules of minerals normally can not be compressed any further and have rigid structure. Solids can be crystalline or amorphous. Minerals are crystalline solids, that have repeating patterns.
- Definite chemical composition
Each mineral has its own specific and unique combinations of atom. The atoms bind together to form compound of minerals. Diamonds, have one type of atom : carbon which binds together and form extremely tight of chemical bond that makes diamonds the hardest substance on earth. Gold, silver, and copper also have only type of atom.
- Crystalline structure
There are crystals containing repeated arrangements of atoms or ions in minerals. Each repeating part of crystal is a unit cell which can have different shapes due to the size of ion or atom. Minerals have crystalline structure formed in two ways : magma or lava and water.
Source : sciencing.com
