MineralsQ&A

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Barstow Community College *

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3040

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Geology

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Apr 30, 2024

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docx

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Minerals PowerPoint: Questions Name: Roderick Taylor Directions: Answer the following questions based on the Minerals PowerPoint. Be sure to place your answers underneath the questions and then either highlight, color or underline your answers. 1. What is the difference between a mineral and a rock? Minerals are the building blocks of rocks. Minerals are naturally occurring, have a crystal structure, have a definite chemical composition, and are non-organic. Minerals combine together to form rocks. 2. Why isn’t cubic zirconia considered a mineral? Cubic zirconia is manufactured and not naturally occurring. 3. Glass can’t be x-rayed because the silicon and oxygen atoms don’t line up in regular arrays. So what is glass lacking to be considered a mineral? Glass is not a crystal structure because the atoms do not line up in a repeating array. 4. The mineral calcite is mostly made of calcium carbonate but some of the calcium can be replaced by magnesium. Which of the four parts of the definition of a mineral does this fall under? A definite chemical composition 5. Why isn’t jet which is a very hard coal made into jewelry considered a mineral? Minerals are non-organic and jet is produced from living things. 6. What classification do most minerals fall under? Most minerals are silicates. 7. What geometric shape do silicates have with the silicon bonded to four oxygen? Silicates have one silicon atom bonded in a tetrahedron to 4 oxygen atoms. 8. Looking to the diagram on the far right, what silicate structure do mica and clays have? Mica and clays have a sheet silicate structure. 9. Looking at the non-silicates at the bottom left, which group does pyrite belong to? Pyrite is in the sulfide group. 10. When panning for gold, the gold stays in the bottom of the pan and all the lighter minerals are floated out. What property of gold is being used here? Density – Gold is heavier than the lighter minerals 11. If you hit a large block of salt coming out of a mine, it breaks into smaller and smaller cubes. What property of minerals is this called? Cleave vs fracture – The salt breaks in directions that follow the cubic form

12. Geologists can often tell minerals apart by seeing which mineral can scratch another. What property of minerals is this called? Hardness – The harder mineral will scratch the softer one. 13. In most mine dumps, you can see a bright gold mineral that is fool’s gold. It looks almost identical to real gold. What property of minerals is this called? Color – Certain minerals are usually a certain color 14. Why is gold usually found by itself in nature as a pure element and not in a compound? Gold is chemically very unreactive. 15. What property of gold discourages using pure 24kt gold in jewelry? Hardness - gold is soft. 16. Gold is sometimes used to cover domes on ceremonial buildings. What property of gold allows this to be economically possible? As far as hardness goes, gold is soft and can be rolled out into thin sheets that would allow covering the dome on a ceremonial building using a relatively small amount of gold. 17. Gold miners often look for where stream gravels meet depressions in the bedrock on river bottoms to find gold. What property of gold lets it accumulate in these depressions? Density – gold is extremely heavy and sinks to the bottom of riverbeds. It is transported by only the most violent storms. 18. What would gold mining companies have to do to the Sierra Nevada today to make large scale gold mining profitable? (Hint: the local residents and environmentalists would never let them do it) They would have to blow up entire mountains and then run them through a mill. 19. What new piece of equipment that anyone can buy for a few hundred dollars is being used to find gold in the old mining tunnels? People are using metal detectors to find gold in old mining tunnels. 20. Placer mining is locating gold in streams and rivers. What is gold mining that uses tunnels into hard rock called? L____________ mining Lode mining 21. What mineral is gold most commonly associated with? Gold is commonly found in quartz veins. 22. What is the simple reason that placer mining has declined so much in California? Most of the easy to find gold has already been removed. 23. What is the best place for placer mining in southern California?

The best place for placer mining in southern California is the East Fork of the San Gabriel river above Azusa. 24. What type of large scale gold mining is profitable today? o__________ p________ mining Open pit mining 25. What dangerous chemical is used to leach gold out of rocks? The rock is leached with cyanide to extract the gold. 26. How many sides does a quartz crystal have? Quartz crystals have six sides (hexagon). 27. What color is pure quartz with no metallic or water impurities? Pure quartz is clear. 28. What is the most common mineral on Earth? Feldspar is the most common mineral on Earth. 29. What does quartz need to grow into large hexagonal crystals? Crystals need space to grow. 30. Why does quartz just form irregular grains in granite rock and not beautiful hexagonal crystals? When magma is cooling, quartz is the last mineral to precipitate and has to squeeze into the irregular spaces between the earlier formed minerals. 31. Where does all the quartz that comes out of granite and gets carried down from the mountains by streams to rivers eventually end up? Hint: it is located in the highest real estate areas but you can visit it for the day The quartz released as sand-sized particles may eventually reach the beach to form beach sand. 32. Why does quartz last practically forever? Quartz is so chemically tough that is practically lasts forever. 33. Why does gold remain in the super hot solutions moving through the crust until the very last minute when everything cools down and it ends up in quartz? Gold doesn’t easily combine with other metals so it stays in the liquid base until it finally cools and quartz is the last mineral to precipitate. As a result, gold is often found with quartz. 34. Our mountains have very little gold compared to the northern Sierra Nevada. What seafloor feature do our local mountains lack that the Sierra has? (just 2 words for the answer) Hydrothermal vents 35. What causes amethyst to be purple colored?

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