Rocks vs. Minerals

Transcript:

So I think the first thing that we want to go over is, what is the difference between a rock and a mineral?

[Kim]: Well, that is an awesome question. So do you have some examples at your desk, Sarah, that we can look at?

[Sarah]: I do.

[Kim]: That's so fun. I didn't bring any rocks or minerals today. I should have. So the difference between a -- so a mineral is naturally occurring, it has a regular atomic structure, and it has a fixed chemical composition, so typically they look very homogeneous. They look the same. So I can tell right away that the sample in the middle of the screen is a mineral.

There you go. And the one above it, too, is a mineral. But then you look on the, what is the right side of my screen, I hope that's the right for everybody, that one, and it has different bits in it, so it has some black, and it has some white, and it has some pink and that's a rock.

So a rock is made up of minerals, that's really the only difference. So they're they're kind of related, kind of not, but all very fun in my opinion.

[Sarah]: So is there a relationship between this rock and these minerals, maybe?

[Kim]: For sure. So like I mentioned, rocks are made up of different minerals. So you can see that rock that is shaking on on your table there has some has some shiny parts, and I don't know if you can tell so much on the screen, but micas have that nice flat surface, and those are those are minerals, so mica is -- you could actually peel them apart layer by layer. I don't suggest you doing that to your nice specimen there, but it's almost like a book, or a bunch of pieces of paper that are put together, and when it's flat it has a really nice shiny surface, so that is what you're seeing in your rock there is those shiny surfaces from the micas.

[Sarah]: Awesome. So would it be something that might help our friends understand if we say, like, the minerals are the ingredients that go into a rock?

I think we could say that, yeah. Kind of like if you're gonna make a cookie you need to have all of your ingredients first. You can't have a chocolate chip cookie without chocolate chips, that's true.