The Quartz Page: Quartz as a Rock-Forming Mineral
For example, a rock that is entirely made of albite, NaAlSi 3 O 8, a feldspar, has 0% quartz content, but contains 77.3% silica (weight percent).. It was once customary to express the chemical composition of a mineral as an oxide formula (mostly because the structural relationships between the elements involved were not precisely known), and it is still useful if one reflects the silica content.