Fabulous feldspars!

Aluminum tectosilicate: A big name for a big group

God created a very big world, and it is full of diversity. From the discovery of new plants and animals to the identification of new minerals, there are plenty of hidden things still out there to find!

One of the most diverse groups of minerals is the feldspars. You have seen them when looking at the natural stone countertops at the local home improvement store. They often form the majority of the rock, providing the pink, white, gray, or bluish hues that give us the overall look and feel of the stone.

While they display a range of colors and can be found in many different kinds of rocks, feldspars have a very consistent set of physical properties. For example, they are all fairly hard and break cleanly in two directions. This is ultimately due to their chemistry.

Below we'll learn how the major feldspar groups are categorized, then explore three important feldspar minerals. And the next time you see a stone countertop, look closely. I'd expect you'll find one of these three minerals in it. Let's explore!

And that's just the beginning!

The diversity of feldspar minerals is even wider than I've let on. The alkali and plagioclase feldspars we've explored are rather common, but there are rarer types made with other kinds of metals, like barium, boron, and lithium. Some of these are important to our current technologies (like lithium batteries), or their chemistry is perfect for making certain types of glass (soda glass and borosilicate glass, for example). Perhaps we'll have to look at these practical minerals again to learn some more...