In 2008, crystals up to

39 feet long were

found in a cave in
Mexico at a depth of
1000 feet. The cave is
extremely hot, with air
temperatures reaching
136 °F with 90 to 99 %
humidity. The cave is
relatively unexplored
due to these
conditions. Without
proper protection,
people can only
endure about ten
minutes of exposure at
a time. See the suits

Mineral & Rocks

 The Earth’s crust is made up of two
things:
• Minerals and Rocks
Coal

Gneiss

Scoria

Rocks are
combinations
Minerals are of minerals
individual crystals
***You should see lots of different
of all the same stuff minerals in every single rock
 Main Concept: Minerals are the
What is a mineral?
building blocks of rocks!

There are five main criteria for

something to be a mineral:
a) It must be solid
b)It must occur naturally
c) It is made of non-living material
d)It has a definite chemical formula
e) It has a crystal structure
 Examples:
***Notice how each is one single type of crystal!
• Amethyst Calcite Garnet

• Galena Gold Pyrite

Where do minerals come from?
 Mineral crystals can form in two main ways:
From stuff
dissolved in liquids From Cooling
(Evaporation & Hot Water) molten material
 Minerals & Crystals from
Magma & Lava
“Extrusive” Cooling:
Lava cools Fast
(Short Time = Small Crystals)

•Minerals form from hot magma as it

cools inside the crust, or as lava cools
on the surface.

•When these liquids cool to a solid, they

form crystals (minerals).

•Size of the crystal depends on time it

takes to freeze into a solid.

“Intrusive” Cooling:
Magma cools slowly
(Long Time = Large Crystals)
 Minerals
Minerals Crystal
Crystal Size
Size
When the hot material cools fast, it has
smaller crystal size. When it cools
slowly, it has large crystals.
Granite Rhyolite

You can see

individual crystals You can’t see many
in Granite individual crystals in Rhyolite
= cooled slowly = cooled very fast
Minerals formed by Evaporation
 Some minerals form when
solutions/mixtures evaporate:
 When water evaporates, it leaves behind the
stuff that’s dissolved in it.

 The longer it takes to evaporate, the larger the

crystal.
 i.e. salt & water – ocean,
 Halite, Gypsum, Calcite.
***All the white stuff = salt mineral crystals that formed
when the water of this lake evaporated.
The mineral material was left behind
These salt crystals formed from
salt water because as the water
evaporated, the salt wasn’t
dissolved anymore. So the
chemical energy in salt takes
over and crystals form.
Do you notice the characteristic
cubic crystalline shapes?
 How do we
identify Minerals?
We use the different physical and chemical properties
of the mineral to identify it from other different minerals

Luster: Describes how light is reflected from a minerals surface.

Streak: Is the color of the minerals powder when dragged across a surface.

Crystal shape: Different minerals make different crystal shapes

Hardness: Hardness is determined by a “scratch test”.

Color: Every mineral has some natural color…ex: Gold, Blue, Clear…
Moh’s Hardness Scale
Soft

Hard
 Special Properties
• Some minerals display strange properties.
• These can include: Magnetism, fluorescence, and reactivity.

The particles of minerals These minerals glow The minerals in

of this rock act like magnets in the dark. this rock react
A black light really brings it out! with acid
 Identifying Characteristics of
Rocks
Igneous Sedimentary
• Intergrown crystals • Cemented fragments
• Glassy texture (sediments)
• Fossils
• Organic material

Metamorphic
•Banding
•Foliated
Activity:
• CLASSIFY this rock as igneous,
sedimentary or metamorphic and
EXPLAIN why you classified it that way.