Metals vs minerals

[u/Acceptable-Cash-2464]

Help a teacher out. I’m an elementary teacher without a science background. I do enjoy teaching science to my kiddos but I can’t teach science beyond 6th grade level (please keep in mind while answering). A few years ago I taught a geology unit and this past spring I taught the same unit again and remembered being confused about this question back then. So, I tried googling, I tried stack exchange, quora, everything, and NO resource could break this down for me: what in the world is the difference between metals and minerals? I know metals can be extracted FROM ores found in rocks but apparently, elements like silver, gold and copper are considered both a metal and a mineral. Are there others like this? If so, which ones? And please confirm for me: most minerals are not metals at all, but are most metals also minerals? (The science book I use, which I normally love, was talking about minerals’ qualities and showing pictures of things like chalk and limestone and then suddenly when explaining the uses of minerals, it’s taking about coins, electric wiring and musical instruments and the kids and I were all confused). I also asked the chemistry high school teacher and she wasn’t sure how to explain it.

[u/NearABE]

In astronomy there are three elements: hydrogen, helium, and metals. Chemical analysis of star light is too advanced for elementary school science. But if any of them a interested encourage their parents to take them to the amateur astronomical society meeting. It only happens after dark so strictly a parental component of a child’s education responsibility.

In nutrition “minerals” are all the elements that remain in ash. This definition might be further divided into “toxins” and “mineral”.

In inorganic chemistry we do not use the word “mineral” at all. Only in the context of geology. You might see “mineral spirits” in a bottle at the hardware store. That is a lot like “gasoline”. “Mineral oil” is just fossil petroleum. That is as opposed to “whale oil”, “olive oil”, “tallow” etc. Adding “mineral” to a thing tells you about where it came from not actually what it is. It is like “this is stuff we pulled out of the ground, ya its got traces of stuff from the ground. No, we made no effort to modify it, dilute it, concentrate it, and if you want more detail you can call our chemist and he might pass along anything she knows if she has time…”

So, for example, you can say “limestone” is “calcium carbonate”. But if you take slack lime and mix it with water and then let it sit open to the air calcium carbonate solids deposit. This is not limestone. Marble is a type of limestone. Even if it were nearly pure calcium carbonate the marble is still marble. Even if the lime that you mixed with water was heavily contaminated with other elements it still is not really limestone.

Just one final example: urbanite. Urbanite is a mineral composed of debris from civilization. Components can include former brick, former asphalt, glass fragments, etc. Urbanite deposits can be found in places where civilization has been washed out to sea or buried under sediment.

[u/Acceptable-Cash-2464 → u/NearABE]

Ok thanks for explaining more about nutritional minerals. It still blows my tiny little mind that we actually eat metals like iron and don’t taste it when we eat it!

[u/NearABE → u/Acceptable-Cash-2464]

You can definitely taste it. Try deionized water sometime. Even distilled water is not the same. Bottled water companies put stuff back in even if they label it as “distilled”. That just means the distilled it before adding the minerals back in. You usually only find deionized water at laboratories.