How do mineral deposits form along mid-ocean ridges?

Mid ocean ridges are divergent plate boundaries where oceanic crust is splitting apart, so there is a constant upwelling of the material beneath the ridge that slowly (sometimes less slowly and more quickly) fills in the gap as it spreads. mineral deposits can form a couple of ways in this area.





The answer above naming Bowen's Reaction Series will show you what minerals will precipitate out of a magma body at what temperatures, and this is true for any magma body, whether beneath the mid-ocean ridge or beneath the crust 10 miles under your feet. However, because the ridge is spreading, and more quickly that would allow for nice, slow precipitation into, say, crystals, you might get admixtures of minerals more often than concentrated mineral deposits in these locales.





The most concentrated mineral deposits at mid-ocean ridges are formed instead by processes involving hydrothermal deposition. This refers to the dissolved minerals in water that has seeped into already cooling, freshly formed rocks at the ridge, generally basalts, and as the water seeps through fractures it picks up higher and higher concentrations of various minerals at very high dissolution temperatures. when this saturated hot water makes it's way out into the open ocean (through ';black smokers'; and the like), it drops minerals by direct precipitation into concentrated piles, most commonly of sulfides. See the wiki black smoker article for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_smoke鈥?/a>How do mineral deposits form along mid-ocean ridges?
Do a google search for ';Bowens Reaction Series';.





That will explain it. It is basically precipitation that is driven by temperature.