Which is not a metallic mineral iron, copper, petroleum, and aluminium?
KamorkasOa > 09-18-2018, 06:20 AM
Petroleum is the odd one out, as it is a fossil fuel rich in carbon-hydrogen-rich organic compounds, and therefore not a metallic substance.
However, to be clear, your question should really be rephrased “Which one of these substances is not metallic: iron, copper, petroleum or aluminum?”
Including the word “mineral” introduces an unwelcome ambiguity because it does not have the same meaning as an adjective and as a noun, especially in the physical and life sciences.
In everyday language, you can refer to petroleum as one of many “mineral resources” we extract from the Earth (as opposed to products we derive from recently living animals and plants). This does not make petroleum a “mineral” in the scientific language of earth or physical sciences. And neither is aluminum because this element does not occur naturally in the Earth’s crust as a pure metal or natural alloy (it reacts too readily with oxygen). In fact, only a tiny fraction of naturally-occurring iron (in meteorites) and copper (in some ore deposits) are considered “minerals” by earth scientists.
On the other hand, iron, aluminum and copper are considered “minerals” in health and nutrition sciences where they use the word to refer to chemical elements that play a role in cellular functions without regard to how they actually occur in nature. Since nutrition or life science is not the context of the question, it’s unnecessarily confusing to call aluminum, copper and iron “minerals”.