Detect: What is covered by "minerals"?

[NineDaysDead]

Very Common (all life, all supernatural phenomena and beings, all minerals, all energy): 30 points.

Minerals is a class that's as broad as all life or all energy. What does it cover and what are its limits.

[Bruno]

My rough guideline would be "Anything naturally found in the ground except animals, plants, and earth (but including clay and sand).

Wikipedia says on the subject:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

A mineral is a naturally occurring chemical compound, usually of crystalline form and abiogenic in origin. A mineral has one specific chemical composition. A mineral is different from a rock, which can be an aggregate of minerals or non-minerals and, therefore, does not have one specific chemical composition. The exact definition of a mineral is under debate, especially with respect to the requirement that a valid species be abiogenic, and to a lesser extent with regard to it having an ordered atomic structure.

Abiogenic means "not made by biological processes" - which is why I exclude earth. Earth is made of a significant amount of organic chemical compounds, in both the sense of "carbon chemistry" and in the older sense "made by life forms".

[Flyndaran]

I think native sulfur rarely exists except as a byproduct of certain anaerobic organisms' respiration. But I would "hope" that if I brought that up in game, the detecting player or GM would glare and/or roll their eyes at me quite harshly.

Though I would think most people classify limestone as a mineral despite its biogenic nature.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Bruno

My rough guideline would be "Anything naturally found in the ground except animals, plants, and earth (but including clay and sand).
".

You want to exclude water and gasses at a minimum. It probably excludes liquid petroleum too.

[acrosome]

In a lot of US law, groundwater is a mineral. :)

It's complicated...

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

Minerals is a class that's as broad as all life or all energy. What does it cover and what are its limits.

It doesn't cover anything that is gaseous or liquid (or otherwise not solid), or anything alive or dead. Other than that, it's got everything covered

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It doesn't cover anything that is gaseous or liquid (or otherwise not solid), or anything alive or dead. Other than that, it's got everything covered

Magma and molten rock doesn't count as a mineral? I'm not arguing as I can see arguments for and against its inclusion.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Magma and molten rock doesn't count as a mineral?

Per the scientific definition, they don't have an ordered atomic structure (being liquids) and therefore can't be minerals. Less pedantically, like traditional solid "rocks", they still aren't "minerals" as they aren't a single chemical compound - they're a hetrogenous mix of different things.

THAT SAID. Since Detect doesn't operate by detecting only the closest single example of a thing (which would be stupid), I'm happy to allow it to detect rocks and sand, with the crude information of "a bunch of minerals in a solid/in sand/in gravel" and requiring analysis to pick apart as to what is what.

I'd stick to my guns on the "liquid things that might be minerals in another phase", same as I wouldn't let you detect them as gasses or plasmas.

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Per the scientific definition, they don't have an ordered atomic structure (being liquids) and therefore can't be minerals. Less pedantically, like traditional solid "rocks", they still aren't "minerals" as they aren't a single chemical compound - they're a hetrogenous mix of different things.

THAT SAID. Since Detect doesn't operate by detecting only the closest single example of a thing (which would be stupid), I'm happy to allow it to detect rocks and sand, with the crude information of "a bunch of minerals in a solid/in sand/in gravel" and requiring analysis to pick apart as to what is what.

I'd stick to my guns on the "liquid things that might be minerals in another phase", same as I wouldn't let you detect them as gasses or plasmas.

How does that interact with the fact that Detect Chemical Substances is Occasional [10] (Enhanced Senses page 24)?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by NineDaysDead

How does that interact with the fact that Detect Chemical Substances is Occasional [10] (Enhanced Senses page 24)?

Ugh. That power should probably be written up in some other way. Detect chemicals is clearly Very Common.