EPSC 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Diopside, Ice Crystals, Pyroxene
11 Mar 2013
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Document Summary
We established that minerals are chemical com- pounds that occur naturally. Minerals have a set of arranged atomic arrangement which makes them different from just random atomic arrangement: anion is a negative charged atom, cation is a positive charged atom. The bonds are much stronger then ionic bonds. Taking halite as an example, the ionic bond created between sodium and chlorine allows for the transfer of one electron which helps make sodium and chlorine charged ions but also stable. There is an equal number of sodium and chloride in halite which through ionic bonds, starts building up its molecular struc- ture by organizing atoms through relative sizes. Cations with a high charge are small, if they have a small charge, they are larger in size. In ionic bonding, we want to pack the anions in and around the cations, based on the size of both the cation and anion. We started talking about diamonds last class; are purely carbon.
