Magma is molten rock that is deep underground.
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Courtesy of Boise National Forest
Magma
If you could travel to the center of the Earth, you would find that it gets hotter and hotter as you travel deeper. The heat is naturally produced when radioactive elements break apart. Within the Earth’s mantle layer it is hot enough that much of the rock has melted, turning it into a liquid that we call molten rock.The molten rock is called magma. Magma is so hot that it glows white and is so bright that you’d need sunglasses to look at it! If it flows into an area underground that is less hot, it cools, becomes yellow, and then increasingly deeper shades of red. As it cools slowly, minerals crystallize from the melt forming intrusive igneous rocks like granite.
If magma finds a crack in the Earth and comes to the surface, it is called lava and cools to form extrusive igneous rocks like basalt.
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TES XXVI, 3 fall 2010
The
Fall 2010 issue of The Earth Scientist, focuses on rocks and minerals, including articles on minerals and mining, the use of minerals in society, and rare earth minerals, and includes 3 posters!
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This very special issue of The Earth Scientist is sponsored by the Mineral Information Institute (MII) and the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration (SME) Foundation and is designed to provide a variety of resources to teachers and students to learn more about minerals and mining.
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Minerals are the building blocks of rocks. They are non-living, solid, and, like all matter, are made of atoms of elements. There are many different types of minerals and each type is made of particular
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Many kilometers below the Earth’s surface, molten rock called magma flows into cracks or underground chambers. There, the magma sits, cooling very slowly over thousands to millions of years. As it cools,
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Look at granite closely and you can see crystals of common silicate minerals such as quartz, plagioclase feldspar and orthoclase feldspar. In fact, granite is mostly quartz and feldspar crystals. It also
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Basalt is an extrusive igneous rock that is very dark in color. It is the most common type of rock in the Earth's crust and it makes up most of the ocean floor. It is made of many dark colored minerals
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Magma consists of remelted material from Earth's crust and fresh material from other regions near the Earth's surface. When magma is erupted onto the surface in the form of lava, it becomes silicate rock.
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Mount St. Helens, a volcano in Washington on the west coast of the United States, has been quiet for 18 years but now it is quiet no more! It has been puffing steam and ash as scientists look for clues
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As magma cools, elements within it bond together to form crystals of minerals. However, not all minerals can form at the same time during cooling. Some minerals grow when magma is still pretty hot, while
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