In order for a substance to be considered a mineral, it most be formed by this type of process.
What is a natural process?
100
When a mineral has strong bonds, it typically displays this kind of property, meaning pieces of the mineral tend to break in irregular pieces.
What is fracture?
100
This molten rock that is found deep beneath Earth's surface contains all types of atoms that are found in minerals. When it cools, it often forms different minerals.
What is magma?
100
Rocks that contain enough of a mineral to be mined for a profit are called this.
What is an ore?
100
This is the tendency of a mineral to break along flat surfaces.
What is cleavage?
200
When a substance has a definite volume and a rigid shape it is considered this, and therefore might be a mineral.
What is a solid?
200
This is another name for the color of the powder left behind when a mineral is scraped across a surface.
What is streak?
200
Gold is formed when this substances begins to cool and the mineral becomes solid again.
What is water?
200
When ores lie deep below the earth's surface, these kinds of mining techniques are needed to obtain the minerals.
What are deep mining methods?
200
This property of a mineral is marked by the way in which light reflects from the mineral's surface.
What is luster?
300
Every mineral consists of a specific combination or atoms of certain elements, also known as this: one of the characteristics of a mineral.
What is a definite chemical makeup?
300
This scale measures a mineral's hardness, its resistance to being scratched.
What is the Moh's Scale?
300
Minerals the are dissolved in water are frequently formed when water undergoes this process.
What is evaporation?
300
Minerals that are at or near the Earth's surface are recovered through this process.
What is surface mining?
300
This is a substance that contains only one type of atom.
What is an element?
400
When a substance is a solid in which the atoms are arranged in an orderly, repeating three-dimensional pattern it is considered to be one of these.
What is a crystal?
400
By measuring this, the amount of mass in a given volume of the substance, one might be able to determine the identity of an unknown mineral.
What is density?
400
These two processes work together and cause new minerals to form as bonds between atoms break and join again.
What are heat and pressure?
400
Through this process, miners remove plants, soil, and unwanted rocks from Earth's surface and use special machines to dig out an ore.
What is strip mining?
400
This group of minerals is the most common rock-forming group and makes up about 90% of the rocks in the Earth's crust.
What are Silicates?
500
Although they typically have many properties, minerals are grouped according to this feature, one of the four characteristics.
What is a chemical makeup?
500
Only displayed by some minerals, this is a special characteristic where minerals tend to glow when they are exposed to ultraviolet light.
What is radioactivity?
500
Organisms can sometimes create their own minerals. The human body, for example, creates this, one of the main minerals in our bones and teeth.
What is apatite?
500
When miners use explosives to break up underlying rocks and recover the ore by digging a deep hole, they are engaged in this process.
What is open-pit mining?
500
This is molten rock that has reached Earth's surface.