Mineral - all that surrounds us

Nevertheless, the world of minerals is much simpler than the world of plants and animals. Among living organisms, there are hundreds of thousands of different genera and species. This world is rapidly changing. Annually in the world of living organisms, new representatives. Not having certain knowledge, we can not determine exactly what the stone you hold in your hands: the same mineral can vary in appearance. Why is this happening? It turns out that the minerals consist of smaller components. We call these components - the building blocks. In nature, there are now about 92 species of bricks. The famous chemist Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev arranged the first of these blocks, which scientists call and chemical elements in a strictly ordered table. This table is called by the name of its author - the periodic table. Each brick in this table has its own name. Elements such as: oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen belong to one species - gases. Elements: sodium, magnesium, iron, mercury, gold and silver are another group, called metals. Different combinations of these elements in different quantities give us what we call minerals. If we combine the chlorine and sodium, you get salt. This salt people and animals eat. Oxygen in the double amount of connecting with the silicon forms a silica, or quartz. Now you have already become clear that such a mineral. This is a natural compound of chemical elements formed naturally, without human intervention. Each mineral is a kind of building, constructed nature of the particular set of bricks. This is not just a chaotic conglomeration of bricks, namely construction, made in certain laws of nature. Knowing the laws of the mineralogical world, you can easily unravel the structure of the mineral and even to build new buildings - minerals. We have found that different combinations of certain chemical elements created on the Earth's surface and its depths of about three thousand of various buildings - the minerals. From a homogeneous mass of such structures are rocks such as: basalt, granite, limestone, sand and many others. The science that studies minerals is called mineralogy, and describes the rocks - petrography, well, studying the building blocks themselves and their wandering in nature - geochemistry.