noun
definition
A calcium fluoride phosphate of variable composition, sometimes used in the manufacture of fertilizer.
Examples of apatite in a Sentence
The ultimate source of these mineral phosphates may be referred in most cases to the apatite widely distributed in crystalline rocks.
Deciphering continental breakup in eastern Australia by combining apatite (U-Th)/He and fission track thermochronometers.
It is the principal inorganic constituent of bones, and hence of the "bone-ash" of commerce (see Phosphorus); it occurs with fluorides in the mineral apatite (q.v.); and the concretions known as coprolites largely consist of this salt.
Other minerals present include diopside, pargasite, spinel, phlogopite, apatite, graphite, pyrrhotite and zircon (Davidson 1943 ).
The artificial preparation of minerals, especially of apatite and isomorphous minerals and of crystalline oxides, was another subject in which he made many experiments.
The first mode of occurrence is of little significance practically, for the crystalline rocks generally contain too little phosphate to be valuable, though occasionally an igneous rock may contain enough apatite to form an inferior fertilizing agent, e.g.
Another group of phosphatic deposits connected with igneous rocks comprises the apatite veins of south Norway, Ottawa and other districts in Canada.
From 1500 to 3500 tons of apatite are obtained yearly in Norway from these veins.
In Ontario apatite has been worked for a long time in deposits of similar nature.
Thus the sulphate constitutes the minerals anhydrite, alabaster, gypsum, and selenite; the carbonate occurs dissolved in most natural waters and as the minerals chalk, marble, calcite, aragonite; also in the double carbonates such as dolomite, bromlite, barytocalcite; the fluoride as fluorspar; the fluophosphate constitutes the mineral apatite; while all the more important mineral silicates contain a proportion of this element.
Impurities.-The properties of iron and steel, like those of most of the metals, are profoundly influenced by the presence of small and sometimes extremely small quantities of certain impurities, of which the most important are phosphorus and sulphur, the former derived chiefly from apatite (phosphate of lime) and other minerals which accompany the iron ore itself, the latter from the pyrite found not only in most iron ores but in nearly all coal and coke.
From these rocks in the Ottawa valley are quarried or mined granite, marble, magnificent blue sodalite, felspar, talc, actinolite, mica, apatite, graphite and corundum; the latter mineral, which occurs on a larger scale here than elsewhere, is rapidly replacing emery as an abrasive.