Oh, wow, oh, oh, wow, oh, wow, oh, man.

Oh, my.

And so, you're listening to the Science of Everything podcast episode 74,

Minerals and Rocks. I'm your host, James Fodor.

In this episode, we're going to take a look at rocks and minerals.

So we'll start with looking at minerals. We'll define what mineral is.

We'll look at some of the properties of different minerals,

so crystal structure and habit, hardness, luster, cleavage, and things like that.

And then I'll go through just some of the main mineral classes, in particular, the silicates,

halites, sulfides, oxide, some of the other main types of minerals.

And then I'll move on to start talking about rocks.

We'll give a brief definition of rocks.

We'll look at the three main types of rocks, igneas, sedimentary, and metamorphic,

some of the subclassifications within each and a few of different properties and other interesting tidbits.

No particular recommended background for this episode, although some basic knowledge of chemistry. So, for example,

the sort of thing that I talk about in episode 8, atoms and molecules would be somewhat helpful for some of the discussion about minerals. Okay, so let's make a start. So, first of all,

starting with minerals. You've probably heard of minerals before. You may have heard of them in the context of vitamins and minerals.

That's a nutrition context.

The definition of mineral there is not the same as the definition of mineral used in geology,

so it's the latter that I'm going to be focusing on here.

In geology, a mineral is a naturally occurring substance that has a specific chemical

formula and a crystal structure and it's inorganic. So those are the four short of

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