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Geosciences LibreTexts

1: Introduction

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Key Concepts
  • Minerals make up just about everything on our planet and are important for maintaining our lifestyles.
  • Minerals in rocks or sediment make up the material we walk on and form the foundations for buildings and other structures.
  • Mineral resources have long been used by people; today they are keys to modern agriculture and industry.
  • The knowledge gained by studying minerals has wide ranging applications.
  • Most minerals are naturally occurring homogeneous geological substances that are stable at Earth-surface conditions.
  • Minerals are inorganic compounds and are crystalline solids.
  • Non-crystalline materials, synthetic minerals, biological minerals, and anthropogenic minerals are not, in general, considered to be true materials.
  • We generally classify minerals based on their chemical compositions and atomic arrangements.
Blue cavansite (a calcium-vanadium silicate) on top of silvery heulandite (calcium-sodium aluminosilicate)


This page titled 1: Introduction is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Dexter Perkins via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.

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