Lithophile element
A lithophile element prefers to sit in silicate rock rather than metal or sulfide, such as calcium, aluminium and potassium.
Lithophile means 'rock-loving'. In the geochemical scheme devised by the Norwegian chemist Victor Goldschmidt in the 1920s, lithophile elements are those that combine readily with oxygen and end up in silicate and oxide minerals. Examples include silicon, magnesium, calcium, aluminium, sodium, potassium, titanium, the rare earth elements and uranium.
When asteroids and planets separated into core, mantle and crust, lithophile elements stayed in the rocky outer layers. The most incompatible of them, those that do not fit easily into common mantle minerals, such as potassium, thorium and the rare earths, were concentrated further into the crust as rocks partly melted.
Goldschmidt's classification is a simple way to predict where an element goes. It helps scientists understand why eucrites from Vesta's crust are rich in calcium, aluminium and rare earths, while iron meteorites from cores contain almost none of them.
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