Halite, sodium chloride, is essential to human life and is the mineral we commonly refer to as salt. Sodium chloride is what makes the ocean salty and is also found crystallizing at the edges of salt lakes throughout the world. Searles Lake, California is a famous example, and the halite crystals from this locality display the typical and characteristic cubic shape of the mineral. Halite also has perfect cubic cleavage; if a crystal is crushed, even the tiniest fragments will (under magnification) be cube shaped.