what is the difference between a crystal and a mineral?

Answer 1

A mineral is made of one or more crystals, and one or more minerals make up a rock.

Answer 2

A mineral is a crystal that also satisfy: naturally occurring, and inorganic in origin.

So, a mineral is always a crystal, but the reverse is not true.

Many proteins can form crystals, but since they are organic they are not minerals. The same happens with man-made crystals.

Answer 3

A crystal describes the structure. Mineral describes the chemical composition or a combination of the crystal form and the composition.
Coincidentally, if minerals are inorganic as one of your answerers believes, then what is a Diamond ?

Answer 4

Please see below. they are hand in hand

Crystal Form & Mineral Habit
Crystal form is responsible for the mineral’s geometric shape and arrangement of crystal faces. The crystal form will always remain the same in every sample found of the same mineral, although the crystal form is better displayed in some samples than in others. Sometimes, growth patterns, called the mineral habit, disguise the ideal form of the crystal. However, these habits can also aid in identification. Some commonly found habits include: botryoidal (which resembles a cluster of grapes), striated (parallel grooves on crystal faces), and acicular (needlelike).

http://geology.utah.gov/surveynotes/gladasked/gladindentify.htm
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Minerals occur naturally on rocky planets and form the building blocks of rocks. They are non-living, solid, and, like all matter, are made of atoms of elements. There are many different types of minerals and each type is made of particular types of atoms. The atoms are bonded together and arranged in a special way called a crystal lattice, a network of atoms. The lattice of atoms is what gives a mineral its crystal shape.

Different types of minerals have different crystal shapes. Most minerals can grow into crystal shapes if they have enough space as they grow. But most of the time there are so many different crystals growing in the same space that they all compete for space and none of the crystals is able to grow very large.

There are two main ways that new crystals of minerals grow. Either they form when molten rock, called magma below a planet’s surface and lava above, cools and changes state from a liquid to a solid allowing atoms to bond together into mineral crystals. Or, some minerals grow when water, that is rich with dissolved elements, evaporates and the atoms in the water get very close together, eventually bonding together forming solid minerals.

The special shapes of minerals are not the only difference between them. Minerals can be identified by other physical properties as well. Each type of mineral has its own unique set of characteristics.

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/earth/geology/min_intro.backup_MetaRefresh

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What is a mineral? A material must fit the following four general criteria to be called a mineral:

Minerals are inorganic, meaning they typically do not form from the remains of plants or animals.
Minerals are naturally occurring. True minerals are not manmade.
Minerals have the same chemical makeup wherever they are found. For example, the mineral quartz always consists of one part silicon (an element) to two parts oxygen (another element). Some minerals, like gold, copper, and sulfur, are made up of only one element. However, most minerals are combinations of several different elements.
Minerals have specific repeating patterns of atoms. This orderly arrangement of atoms forms the mineral's characteristic crystal shape. For example, a crystal of quartz is always hexagonal because of the way the atoms of silicon and oxygen join together. However, if a quartz crystal does not have much room to grow, it may not look hexagonal on the outside, even though the atoms on the inside are arranged in the same orderly pattern.

What is a rock? Minerals are the building blocks of rocks. A rock is made up of one or more minerals. Rocks can be placed in one of three categories depending on how they form:

Igneous rocks form from magma (molten rock) either deep within the Earth (for example, granite), or on the Earth's surface when lava cools and hardens (for example, pumice).
Sedimentary rocks are layered rocks that form primarily from the accumulation and compaction of sediment which is derived from preexisting rocks by erosion (weathering by water, wind, or ice) (for example, sandstone). Some sedimentary rocks form by precipitation from solution (for example, gypsum).
Metamorphic rocks form when preexisting rocks--igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic--are subjected to extreme temperatures and pressures deep within the Earth. The intense heat and pressure cause the mineral composition and grain size to change. For example, limestones become marbles and shales become slates.

Now that you know the general definitions, how can you tell the difference between rocks and minerals? This is where observation and classification becomes important. Minerals are homogeneous (the same throughout). A mineral will generally have the same appearance both on the interior and exterior of the sample. The properties of color and texture generally do not vary sharply because of this homogeneity. However, color and texture generally do vary sharply in rocks because rocks are made up of a variety of different minerals.

http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/geosurvey/edu/hands11.htm

Answer 5

QFL is bang on with that short but to the point statement.