What is the most valuable mineral on Earth? Diamond? Ice (Yes, ice is a mineral)? Some native gold or gold ore? Hematite, an iron ore? Wolframite (tungsten)? Ores of titanium or platinum? Argentite (silver)? How about apatite? “What’s that?” you ask as you cup your hand behind your ear.
If you read “The Many Facets of Apatite” by John M. Hughes, apatite is incredibly important.* The set of minerals lumped together as “apatite” includes fluorapatite, chlorapatite, hydroxylapatite, and an apatite group. All contain as part of their basic makeup phosphate molecules (PO4). With such variation, apatite can be colorless or just about any color (green, brown, blue, white, yellow, gray, red, pink, purple). A well-developed crystal of the mineral has hexagonal structure. Apatite minerals form in igneous or metamorphic rocks.
So, why is this stuff important? According to Hughes, “Apatite forms virtually all hard parts of the human body.” It’s also important in the anion exchange that allows fluoridation to protect our teeth from decay. It serves as an investigative tool to distinguish between “benign and malignant breast tumors,” serves as the “principal raw material in the fluorescent lighting industry,” and is useful in making lasers, storing radioactive materials, and stabilizing metals in environmental cleanup projects. Most importantly, “even the exponential growth of the human population to seven billion …has been allowed by the extraction of sufficient P [phosphorus] from apatite ore to provide fertilizer to feed the planet’s population.”
I like that food connection at the end. Stuff that most Earthlings are unfamiliar with actually makes it possible for them to live. Bliss in ignorance. A mineral most of us would not recognize sustains us. Important to the rise of modern civilization, apatite will play an increasing role as a burgeoning population requires a larger appetite for apatite. The mineral will enrich our arable soils with an important nutrient while most of humanity remains unaware they hunger for its increased use.
And that’s the way it is for other aspects of our lives. Others around support our lives. Others have crystallized our opportunities, have helped to protect us, and have fertilized the seeds of our intellectual growth. So, apatite serves in a way as an analog of our nonphysical existence, but there is another parallel. As Hughes notes, “Despite its remarkable utility and its fundamental role in feeding the world’s population, the details of the apatite atomic arrangement are not fully understood.” How’s that a parallel? Think of how little we know about the interior “arrangement” of motivations that drive others to help us. Is it their appetite for selfless good in anonymity like apatite?
* DOI: 10.2138/am-2015-5193 Published on May 2015, First Published on May 12, 2015; American Mineralogist online at http://ammin.geoscienceworld.org/content/100/5-6/1033.abstract
If you read “The Many Facets of Apatite” by John M. Hughes, apatite is incredibly important.* The set of minerals lumped together as “apatite” includes fluorapatite, chlorapatite, hydroxylapatite, and an apatite group. All contain as part of their basic makeup phosphate molecules (PO4). With such variation, apatite can be colorless or just about any color (green, brown, blue, white, yellow, gray, red, pink, purple). A well-developed crystal of the mineral has hexagonal structure. Apatite minerals form in igneous or metamorphic rocks.
So, why is this stuff important? According to Hughes, “Apatite forms virtually all hard parts of the human body.” It’s also important in the anion exchange that allows fluoridation to protect our teeth from decay. It serves as an investigative tool to distinguish between “benign and malignant breast tumors,” serves as the “principal raw material in the fluorescent lighting industry,” and is useful in making lasers, storing radioactive materials, and stabilizing metals in environmental cleanup projects. Most importantly, “even the exponential growth of the human population to seven billion …has been allowed by the extraction of sufficient P [phosphorus] from apatite ore to provide fertilizer to feed the planet’s population.”
I like that food connection at the end. Stuff that most Earthlings are unfamiliar with actually makes it possible for them to live. Bliss in ignorance. A mineral most of us would not recognize sustains us. Important to the rise of modern civilization, apatite will play an increasing role as a burgeoning population requires a larger appetite for apatite. The mineral will enrich our arable soils with an important nutrient while most of humanity remains unaware they hunger for its increased use.
And that’s the way it is for other aspects of our lives. Others around support our lives. Others have crystallized our opportunities, have helped to protect us, and have fertilized the seeds of our intellectual growth. So, apatite serves in a way as an analog of our nonphysical existence, but there is another parallel. As Hughes notes, “Despite its remarkable utility and its fundamental role in feeding the world’s population, the details of the apatite atomic arrangement are not fully understood.” How’s that a parallel? Think of how little we know about the interior “arrangement” of motivations that drive others to help us. Is it their appetite for selfless good in anonymity like apatite?
* DOI: 10.2138/am-2015-5193 Published on May 2015, First Published on May 12, 2015; American Mineralogist online at http://ammin.geoscienceworld.org/content/100/5-6/1033.abstract
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