Lab 3: Silicate Minerals
Lab Structure
| Recommended additional work | Yes – review concepts from Labs 1, 2 and 3 in preparation for Test 1 |
| Required materials | Mineral ID kit, Mineral Kits 1 and 2, pencil |
Learning Objectives
By the end of this lab, you should be able to:
- Describe a silica tetrahedron and the ways in which tetrahedra combine to make silicate minerals.
- Differentiate between ferromagnesian and other silicate minerals.
- Identify and describe the physical properties of a range of silicate minerals in hand sample, and how these properties are used to identify minerals.
Key Terms
|
|
The vast majority of the minerals that make up the rocks of Earth’s crust are silicate minerals. These include minerals such as quartz, feldspar, mica, amphibole, pyroxene, olivine, and a variety of clay minerals. The building block of all of these minerals is the silica tetrahedron, a combination of four oxygen atoms and one silicon atom that form a four-sided pyramid shape with O at each corner and Si in the middle. The bonds in a silica tetrahedron have some of the properties of covalent bonds and some of the properties of ionic bonds. As we will see during this lab, silica tetrahedra (plural of tetrahedron) link together in a variety of ways to form most of the common minerals of the crust.
