We’re about to dive into a comprehensive course that teaches the big ideas behind rocks, minerals, and the science of geology. Soon you’ll learn how to burn coal, fluoresce minerals, chemically react rocks, streak powders, scratch glass, and play with atomic bonds as they learn how to be a real field geologist.
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Everything is matter. Well, except for energy, but that’s everything else. Everything you can touch and feel is matter. It is made up of solid (kind of) atoms that combine and form in different ways to create light poles, swimming pools, poodles, Jell-O and even the smell coming from your pizza.
All matter is made of atoms. Shoes, air, watermelons, milk, wombats, you, everything is made of atoms. Hundreds and billions and zillions of atoms make up everything. When you fly your kite, it’s atoms moving against the kite that keep it in the air. When you float in a boat, it’s atoms under your boat holding it up.
My definition of an atom is: the smallest part of stable matter. There are things smaller than an atom, but they are unstable and can’t be around for long on their own. Atoms are very stable and can be around for long periods of time. Atoms rarely hang out on their own, though. They are outgoing and usually love to get together in groups. These groups of atoms are called molecules. A molecule can be made of anywhere from two atoms to millions of atoms. Together these atoms make absolutely everything, including the minerals, crystals, and rocks we’re about to study.
A periodic chart has a bunch of boxes. Each box represents one element. In each box is a ton of information about each element. All atoms are made from the same stuff; it’s just the amount of stuff that makes the atoms behave the way they do.
If you look at a periodic table you will notice that there will be about 112 to 118 different elements (this will vary depending on how recently the table was created). About 90 of those occur naturally in the universe. The other ones have been man-made and are very unstable. So imagine: Everything in existence, in the entire universe, is made of one or several of only about 90 different types of atoms. Everything, from pianos to pistachios are made from the same set of 90 different Legos!
Now, if you find that amazing, listen to this: Almost everything in the universe is mostly made of only twelve different kinds of atoms! But wait, there’s more.
All living things are mostly made of only five different kinds of atoms! Five! You and a hamster are made of the same stuff! All living and once-living things are made mostly of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and calcium. Ta daa! Those are the ingredients for life. Put ‘em in a bowl, stir and voila, you can make your own penguin.
Okay, obviously it’s not that easy. It takes a lot more than that to make life, but at least now you know the ingredients. An easy way to remember the main ingredients for living things is to remember the word CHONC. Each letter in CHONC is the first letter in the 5 elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and calcium.
One last interesting thing to think about here: Of all the atoms in the entire universe, 90% of them are hydrogen. Only 10% of the entire universe is made up of anything other than hydrogen.
Throughout this course, we’re going to be talking about the chemical composition (what elements rocks are made of), so you’ll really understand chemistry and geology both!
Minerals are pure chemical substances, made up entirely of one molecule through and through. Examples of minerals are everywhere. Rock salt is a mineral called halite. Fool’s gold is a mineral called pyrite. They are made of a single substance and nothing else. Rocks are composed of two or more minerals. We’re going to study rocks, minerals, crystals, and more in our unit on geology!
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