Portal:Minerals

The Minerals Portal

Crystals of serandite, natrolite, analcime, and aegirine from Mont Saint-Hilaire, Quebec, Canada

In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid substance with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.

The geological definition of mineral normally excludes compounds that occur only in living organisms. However, some minerals are often biogenic (such as calcite) or organic compounds in the sense of chemistry (such as mellite). Moreover, living organisms often synthesize inorganic minerals (such as hydroxylapatite) that also occur in rocks.

The concept of mineral is distinct from rock, which is any bulk solid geologic material that is relatively homogeneous at a large enough scale. A rock may consist of one type of mineral or may be an aggregate of two or more different types of minerals, spacially segregated into distinct phases.

Some natural solid substances without a definite crystalline structure, such as opal or obsidian, are more properly called mineraloids. If a chemical compound occurs naturally with different crystal structures, each structure is considered a different mineral species. Thus, for example, quartz and stishovite are two different minerals consisting of the same compound, silicon dioxide. (Full article...)


Mineralogy is a subject of geology specializing in the scientific study of the chemistry, crystal structure, and physical (including optical) properties of minerals and mineralized artifacts. Specific studies within mineralogy include the processes of mineral origin and formation, classification of minerals, their geographical distribution, as well as their utilization. (Full article...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected articles

Selected mineralogist

Related portals

Get involved

For editor resources and to collaborate with other editors on improving Wikipedia's Minerals-related articles, see WikiProject Rocks and minerals.

General images

The following are images from various mineral-related articles on Wikipedia.

Did you know ...?

Sérandite from Mont Saint-Hilaire, Quebec, Canada

Subcategories

Category puzzle
Category puzzle
Select [►] to view subcategories

Topics

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

  • Commons
    Free media repository
  • Wikibooks
    Free textbooks and manuals
  • Wikidata
    Free knowledge base
  • Wikinews
    Free-content news
  • Wikiquote
    Collection of quotations
  • Wikisource
    Free-content library
  • Wikiversity
    Free learning tools
  • Wiktionary
    Dictionary and thesaurus

References

  1. ^ International Plant Names Index.  L.C.Beck.
Discover Wikipedia using portals

Purge server cache

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Portal:Minerals&oldid=1211458926"