Rocks and Minerals - 8.5 Mineral Rocks [ARCHIVE] Flashcards
What is a mineral?
A naturally occurring solid or liquid in the Earth’s crust, but not including coal or oil.
What are most minerals?
Some are pure elements but most are compounds made up of different elements.
What are ores?
Rocks containing naturally occurring minerals that are valuable.
What are the physical properties used to identify minerals?
- Hardness
- Lustre
- Colour
- Streak colour
How is hardness assessed?
Minerals are assessed on the Mohs scale by scratching an unknown mineral to determine its hardness.
How is a minerals colour useful?
It makes searching for minerals easier.
What is lustre and how is a minerals lustre useful?
How shiny a mineral is. Lustre can be useful when you are searching for minerals.
What are streaks?
The colour left behind when you are trying to scratch the surface of an unglazed white tile with the mineral.
What are flame tests?
Flame tests are used to identify elements in a sample by observing the colour of the flame produced when heated.
What are mineral resources?
Minerals that are dug up and used.
What are the steps in obtaining minerals? (Memorize 2 steps at a time)
- Exploration - Searching for the rock
- Mining - The removal of the resource from the ground
- Enrichment - crushing/grinding the material to increase concentration
- Extraction - removing the desired element from its compound.
