Minerals are typically compounds- i.e. materials comprised of several elements. For example, a common mineral is quartz, whose chemical formula is SiO₂. The elements within quartz are Si and O, but the compound that garners the name “quartz” is the specific combination of those elements (SiO₂). The origin of the name “mineral” can be tricky to pin down, but my best guess is the following. Most minerals are naturally occurring, “rock-like” substances and therefore require mining to obtain them. Thus “minerals” are a product of “mines,” and these two words share a common root.

Minerals are all made of elements.

Some minerals are made of several elements, and some minerals are made of only 1 element. Diamond and graphite are both made of only carbon. Pencil lead is made of graphite. Gold and silver are minerals that are only made of 1 element, too.

My favorite mineral is mica. It is made of piles of thin mineral sheets with silicon and oxygen and aluminum and potassium and sometimes bits of other elements.

Minerals are materials that meet five requirements. They are:
1) naturally occurring,
2) inorganic,
3) solids,
4) with a definite chemical composition, and,
5) an ordered internal structure .

Compounds are usually molecules made of 2 or more elements. Sometimes minerals made of 2 or more elements are called compounds.

Rocks are made of different minerals. Granite rock is made of black mica and quartz and other minerals.

Once I gave a talk at the UC Santa Barbara Physics Department. A physicist wanted to know if mica is a mineral or a rock. I didn't have a good answer. Now I know that mica is a mineral, and some rocks have mica in them.

I think life might have started between mica's mineral sheets. Here's my website:
Prof. Hansma site.

A bout the origin of the word 'mineral', min·er·al - late Middle English: from medieval Latin minerale, from minera ‘ore’.

Minerals are solid materials that form the earth and other planets. A small number of minerals are a single element, such as gold, or silver. Most minerals are compounds made of multiple elements. When we want to mine a specific element, we have to find a way to remove all the other elements and leave behind just the element we want. For example, we need pure copper to use in electrical wires. But where do we get copper to make the electric wires? We need to find this copper somewhere on earth and mine it (remove it from the earth). Most likely the copper isn't just sitting in the earth as pure copper, it is bound to other elements in a mineral, in a rock in the earth. We would have to find a way to remove all the other elements and leave behind just the pure copper for it to be useful. A geologist would search for a rock with high amounts of copper minerals that could be mined. Usually copper is found bound to sulfur in minerals such as pyrite, and chalcopyrite.