Halide mineral in the context of "Halite"

Halite (/ˈhælaɪt, ˈheɪlaɪt/ HAL-yte, HAY-lyte), commonly known as rock salt, is a type of salt, the mineral (natural) form of sodium chloride (NaCl). Halite forms isometric crystals. The mineral is typically colorless or white, but may also be light blue, dark blue, purple, pink, red, orange, yellow or gray depending on inclusion of other materials, impurities, and structural or isotopic abnormalities in the crystals. It commonly occurs with other evaporite deposit minerals such as several of the sulfates, halides, and borates. The name halite is derived from the Ancient Greek word for "salt", ἅλς (háls).

Fluorite (also called fluorspar) is the mineral form of calcium fluoride, CaF₂. It belongs to the halide minerals. It crystallizes in isometric cubic habit, although octahedral and more complex isometric forms are not uncommon.

The Mohs scale of mineral hardness, based on scratch hardness comparison, defines value 4 as fluorite.

In chemistry, a halide (rarely halogenide) is a binary chemical compound, of which one part is a halogen atom and the other part is an element or radical that is less electronegative (or more electropositive) than the halogen, to make a fluoride, chloride, bromide, iodide, astatide, or theoretically tennesside compound. The alkali metals combine directly with halogens under appropriate conditions forming halides of the general formula, MX (X = F, Cl, Br or I). Many salts are halides; the hal- syllable in halide and halite reflects this correlation.

A halide ion is a halogen atom bearing a negative charge. The common halide anions are fluoride (F), chloride (Cl), bromide (Br), and iodide (I). Such ions are present in many ionic halide salts. Halide minerals contain halides. All these halide anions are colorless. Halides also form covalent bonds, examples being colorless TiF₄, colorless TiCl₄, orange TiBr₄, and brown TiI₄. The heavier members TiCl₄, TiBr₄, TiI₄ can be distilled readily because they are molecular. The outlier is TiF₄, m.p. 284 °C, because it has a polymeric structure. Fluorides often differ from the heavier halides.

Atacamite is a copper halide mineral: a copper(II) chloride hydroxide with formula Cu₂Cl(OH)₃. It was first described from deposits in the Atacama Desert of Chile in 1802 by Dmitri Alekseyevich Golitsyn. The Atacama Desert is also the namesake of the mineral.