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USGS CMG InfoBank: Quartz

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Comment: 08:34 - 09:20 (00:46)

Source: Annenberg/CPB Resources - Earth Revealed - 12. Minerals: The Materials of Earth

Keywords: "Richard Hazlett", mineral, quartz, silicon, oxygen, solid, gas, hardness, "three-dimensional bonding", ion, transparent, crystal, element

Our transcription: Another mineral with physical properties that are different from those of its chemical proponents is quartz.

If you look at the mineral quartz, it's composed of silicon, which in its pure state is a silvery solid substance, and oxygen, which isn't a solid at all, but an important atmospheric gas, that also behaves flammably.

Silicon and oxygen are very different individually.

They don't combine to form quartz under ordinary surface conditions, but inside the Earth quartz forming reactions are common.

Quartz is harder than steel due to the three-dimensional bonding of its individual silicon and oxygen ions.

It's usually transparent, forms beautiful crystals, very different from its pure separated elements.

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