mineral formation

• Solidification: Minerals are formed from molten lava or magma.
• Hydrothermal activity: Groundwater heated by magma dissolves small amounts of metals from rock and precipitates them in veins as it cools.
• Recrystallisation: Metamorphic rocks are formed when minerals like calcite recrystallize under heat and pressure.
• Evaporation: Saline water evaporates, causing minerals like calcite, gypsum, and halite to precipitate out of solution.
• Cementation: Minerals precipitate as a cement from pore water during rock formation, filling pore spaces in sedimentary rock.
• Chemical weathering of silicate minerals to clay minerals, where water reacts with silicate minerals in processes of hydrolysis and converts them into clays (only quartz is unaffected).