Why It Matters: Rock Forming Minerals

Yuri Gorokhovich; Lumen Learning

11 Why It Matters: Rock Forming Minerals

Identify and compare common rock forming minerals, mineral structures and mineral properties.

One of the related fields of geology is mineralogy: the study of minerals. Geologists rely on minerals for many reasons. Not only are some minerals considered resources we use, such as gypsum, but they are the basis for the formation of rocks. Minerals are classified in different ways based on the elements that they contain. Matter (elements) makes up the minerals and minerals make up rocks. We can’t understand rocks and rock forming process or some of the other areas of geology until we have a basic knowledge of minerals.

OCCUPATION FOCUS: MINERALOGIST

Mineralogists specialize in minerals—their identification, their chemistry, and their formation. Mineralogists work can work in laboratories, in museums, for corporations, or for the government, but they mainly work “in the field.” It is not uncommon to find them in very remote locations such as caves. They can focus on mineral identification for resource locations, the economic value of the mineral such as diamonds, they can examine the chemical content of minerals to help learn about the interior of the Earth and the various geologic processes. Regardless of what they are focusing on, mineralogists need a solid foundation in both chemistry and geology.

What is a mineral?

Use of minerals in our society: one mineral that transformed the world

http://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/how-the-chip-changed-everything/

Silicon chips are the basic building blocks of modern computation. Semiconductor devices called transistors are the tiny electronic switches that run computations inside our computers. Scientists in the US built the first silicon transistor in 1947. Before that, the mechanics of computing had been performed by vacuum tubes, which were slow and bulky. Silicon changed everything.

Silicon feeds a $500bn (£410bn) chip industry that in turn powers a global tech economy worth an estimated $3tn. The semiconductor business has also become one of the most interlinked in history, with raw materials coming from Japan and Mexico and chips made in the US and China. The chips are then shipped around the world again to be installed in devices that end up in people’s hands in every country in the world.

See two good short videos there about mining silicon and making chips.