Earth, Our Environment - Class Notes

---

Chapter 3, Minerals: The Building Blocks of Rocks - 05

---

Bonding Atoms and Making Minerals

Chemical Bonds

Chemical bonds (formed between electrons) are the forces that hold the atoms together. There are four types of chemical bonds:

• Ionic - One ion gives up and electron, the other accepts an electron, then the ions attract each other.
• Covalent - Atoms share electrons (the electrons begin to "orbit" both atoms).
• van der Waals - Weak attractions are created between electrically polarized, but normally neutral molecules.
• Metallic - The atoms give up their "valence" electrons, and those electrons are shared by all the atoms in the structure. Those "free" electrons are why metals are good conductors of electricity and malleable.

More than one type of bond can be present in any mineral.

Atoms combine to Build Minerals

Minerals are compounds (a collection of more than one atom) of one or more different types of atoms.

The regular geometric arrangement of atoms in a mineral is called the lattice. Diamond and graphite are made of the same type of atoms (Carbon) but have substantially different lattice structures.

---

Previous0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next

---

Back to EAS 111 Home | Ammon's Home | Department of Geosciences