Powerpoint presentation used for the note section of a rocks and minerals unit

1. Minerals and Rocks
Understanding the Rock Cycle

2. What are minerals?
• All rocks are
composed of minerals
• Minerals are naturally
occurring, nonliving
substances found on
Earth.
• There are about 3500
known minerals

3. About 20 minerals make up more than 95%
of all of the rocks in the Earth’s crust

4. Chemical Composition
Minerals have a definite chemical
composition and structure

6. Heat and
pressure Sedimentary Rock Metamorphic Rock
Melting
Deposition,
Lithification and
cementation
Igneous Rock

7. How do minerals make rocks?
New rocks are formed from volcanoes

8. Igneous Rocks
Molten rocks cool and solidify to form igneous rocks

9. What happens over time?

10. Sedimentary Rocks
• Sedimentary rocks
are composed of the
remains of older rocks
and organisms.
• It is in these rocks
that we find fossils

11. How are they formed?
The process of sediments
being laid down
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The process of particles and minerals layering and
joining together to become one rock type
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12. What do they look like?

13. Metamorphic Rocks
• Metamorphic rocks
can be formed from
any other type of rock
• The similarities are
often uncanny…its
just a little change
• But How???

14. It is metamorphosed

15. A little pressure and you’ll fold up
like a metamorphic rock

16. Heat and
pressure Sedimentary Rock Metamorphic Rock
Melting
Deposition,
Lithification and
cementation
Igneous Rock