Native element minerals are those elements that occur in nature in uncombined form with a distinct mineral structure. The elemental class includes metals and intermetallic elements, semi-metals and non-metals. This group also includes natural alloys, phosphides, silicides, nitrides and carbides.
There are 32 elements (18 metals, 5 nonmetals and gases) that can be found in nature in their elemental form. Metals give a metallic luster on their polished sides, as do some nonmetal and semimetal minerals.
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Native sulfur
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Diamond
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Native copper
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Native gold
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Native silver
Read more about Native Element Minerals: Nickel–Strunz Classification -01- Native Elements
Famous quotes containing the words native and/or element:
“The Iliad represents no creed nor opinion, and we read it with a rare sense of freedom and irresponsibility, as if we trod on native ground, and were autochthones of the soil.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a new and continental element into the national mind, as we shall yet have an American genius.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)