By Dr. Robert Thorson
I wish the editors of a Rhode Island newspaper I recently was reading had learned about olivine before declaring that quartz is the world’s most common mineral.
Ouch! Quartz is definitely not the most common mineral. Not for the whole Earth. Not for the Earth’s crust. Not even for the quartz-rich continental crust. For the whole Earth, that distinction belongs to olivine and its high-pressure variants. When concentrated, it resembles crushed ice covered with apple-green syrup.
The tidbit of misinformation about quartz was part of the “Do You Know?” feature in the newspaper, which was trying to do the right thing.
The olivine group of minerals makes up more than half of the mantle, which contains two-thirds of the Earth by weight and contains 97 percent of its minerals. The Earth’s crust contains less than half a percent of the planet by weight and comes in two versions: oceanic and continental. In both places, the distinction “most common” belongs to the feldspar group. Quartz may be the most well-known mineral after diamond. But that doesn’t make it the most common.
By devoting space to cultural literacy – rather than something salacious or sporty – the newspaper’s editors are trying to reinforce what teachers tried to accomplish in school: to impart the common knowledge that helps glue our society together. I wasn’t bothered by the wrong fact. What bothered me was why it was wrong. This error says less about loose editing or sloppy researching than it does about an American educational culture that has downplayed earth science education to the basement of environmental education.
In fact, I believe the costly delay in our national policy on “global warming” is mostly about ignorance of how the Earth works. One cannot understand global climate change without knowing something about limestone, soil development, ice ages, evolution, volcanic emissions and fossil fuel. Climatology is a earth science, as are oceanography and meteorology.
The “Did You Know?” entry about minerals was titled “Dead Weight.” The text read: “Minerals are natural solid materials in the soil that were never alive. All of the land on our planet rests on a layer of rock made up of minerals. The most common mineral is quartz.”
Beyond the problem with quartz, minerals are not restricted to the soil. Every snowflake in the air is a mineral crystal, as is the iron in Earth’s solid inner core. Conversely, the bulk of the yellow stone at Yellowstone National Park is composed of volcanic glass, rather than minerals. The words “dead” and “not-alive” put a negative spin on earth science. Land doesn’t rest on a layer of rock. It is rock, arranged in multiple concentric layers down to great depth.
Why such public ignorance about earth science? First, the very existence of fossils and the great antiquity of Earth are seen as a challenge to religious orthodoxy, and are therefore soft-pedaled in schools. Second, earth sciencealways takes a back seat to biology, chemistry and physics in high school science curricula.
Biology – arguably a part of earth science – is there because humans have a natural affinity for living things. Chemistry and physics are there because advanced students seeking entry to competitive colleges need to emphasize these fundamental subjects. Hence, geology is rarely taught as a standalone subject in high school. Instead, it’s usually bundled with oceanography and astronomy within an early, general science course viewed as an alternative to the competitive college track. This situation is inverted in college where the fundamental subjects of calculus, physics and chemistry are required before geoscientists can do the really fun stuff.
When I hear the phrase “God’s green Earth,” I don’t think of lush vegetation. I think of olivine, a beautiful translucent mineral. When I hear the phrase “Green Party,” I don’t think of politics. I think of geologists smashing away on rocks derived from the bowels of the Earth, which are tinged green with what is arguably Earth’s most important mineral.
To “go green” need not mean a shift toward ecological thinking. It can also mean a shift toward thinking about the whole Earth, not just its photosynthetic veneer.