Minerals!
Look around you - likely you’ll see a lot of metal, plastic, and paper. Minerals are used all throughout our everyday lives!
Metals we use in electronics are refined from ore minerals like hematite, dyes used in plastic are processed from colorful minerals like azurite, and some white paper uses clay minerals like kaolinite.
Minerals are essentially natural chemicals with a set shape - called crystal structure.
Each mineral has its own unique set of properties - so the more properties we know about a mineral we found, the better of an idea we have on what that may be.
Another important property is hardness, which doesn’t measure how strong a mineral is, but rather how difficult it is to scratch.
The pictures shown throughout are examples of common minerals. Click on each to read more about that mineral!
