[Rockhounds] ite ending of minerals

[Rik Dillen]

I got tonight a question of my grandson (just 3 years old) : "Why is the moon sometimes big and sometimes small ?".
Explain that without telling about refraction of light in the atmosphere, the orientation of the trio sun/earth/moon
etc.
It is more easy to explain to an adult how a laser ablation high resolution inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer
works...

The joy of having a grandson (and since 3 months also a granddaughter)... just like Carolyn I need all my imagination
and creativity to explain things here.
Grts,

Rik DILLEN 
Doornstraat 15,  B-9170 Sint-Gillis-Waas 
Belgium 
E-mail rik.dillen at skynet.be 
Homepage : http://users.skynet.be/rik.dillen 
>>> Belgian minerals 
>>> An own find on a Korean (and now again on a Guinean) postage stamp ! 
>>> Exchange list 
 
MINERANT 2008  -  26-27 April 2008
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Jan Van Rijswijcklaan 191 Antwerpen 
http://www.minerant.org/mka/minerantnl.html 
Mineral collector's page http://www.minerant.org/ 

-----Original Message-----
From: rockhounds-bounces at lists.drizzle.com [mailto:rockhounds-bounces at lists.drizzle.com] On Behalf Of DonH
Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 9:07 PM
To: Rockhounds at drizzle.com: A mailing list for rock and gem collectors
Subject: Re: [Rockhounds] ite ending of minerals

Carolyn Reynard wrote:
> I know we have discussed the reason most minerals end in... ite.  However, I
> have failed to enter the reason in my memory bank which I quickly noted when
> one of our 6 year old junior rockhounds asked me, "why do all minerals end
> in ite?".  Please help!

Hi,

An explanation tailored to a 6-year-old would be that there was an 
international commission established in the 1960s to standardize mineral 
naming.  However, minerals named by scientists before then often used 
combinations of Greek and Latin root words and suffixes.  So of the more 
than 4,000 named species, some have the -ite suffix and some do not, 
depending if they were named after the commission decided on the rules. 
  At this point you do *not* want to confuse the child by saying that a 
few non-compliant names, such as hafnon (should have been disapproved 
and suggested as hafnite), have been approved by the commission.

This may raise the question of why scientists like to use Greek and 
Latin names for all sorts of things, which is a long tradition... I'll 
let you explain that one. And explain why many prominent scientists in 
the old days Latinized their names... the mind boggles.

The new Shorter Oxford English Dictionary gives several definitions for 
-ite, depending on context, one of which is that it is the suffix of a 
mineral name, with references to the same suffix in zoology, chemistry, 
paleontology, etc.  The suffix corresponds to similar Latin and Greek 
terms.  Don't quote me on this, but it might mean "composed of" or 
"being a member of."  I learned it at one time, but forgot, and can't 
find the authoritative definition.  Until we can come up with a sound 
definition of the suffix, it would be appropriate to tell the child that 
it is a suffix commonly used in the sciences to denote species and 
chemical compounds and is derived from Greek or Latin.

I hope this helps a little.

Best,
Don

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