1. Mineral Properties & Identification

2. The story of minerals so far….
Minerals formed from elements that originated in exploding stars, made a nebula and then formed our solar system
Minerals are solid, naturally occurring, inorganic, made of chemical elements and have an internal arrangement of atoms (crystal structure)
Native minerals are made of 1 element: gold, sulfur, iron
Top elements that make up the Earth’s crust are: oxygen, silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, sodium, potassium, magnesium
Most minerals are compounds: NaCl, CaCO3 SiO2
A rock is a mixture of 1 or more minerals: granite
Limestone is made of only one mineral – calcite.

3. Properties used to Identify Minerals
Color
Odor
Shiny or dull (Luster)
Hardness (scratches)
Streak color (on streak plate)
Solubility in water
Dissolve in water or react in acid
Cleavage (split or shatter when hammered)
Review these properties after students have had a chance to sort and group minerals into piles by characteristics

4. More properties to I.D. minerals
Optical properties: double refraction
Magnetic
Heavy (specific gravity)
Crystal shape
Fluorescent
Taste?
Radioactive
Crystal shape is next section, obviously we won’t test radioactivity

5. In each Mineral I.D. Lab bag:
8 minerals
1 Hand lens 1 yellow
1 Penny clear
1 Glass plate 2 pink
2 Streak plates 1 dark red
1 magnet flat
1 Nail gold

6. Mineral I.D. Lab

7. Physical Properties of Minerals
Color: light or dark, yellow, gold, pink….
Luster:
metallic,
Non-metallic: dull, glassy,
vitreous, pearly, adamantine
Light Interaction:
Opaque: not allowing light to pass through
Translucent: “cloudy”; some light passes through but not able to see clear detail
Transparent: allows light to pass through and detail can be seen clearly

8. Streak The color of the mineral in its powdered form.
Rubbing the mineral on a streak plate.
Streak is more reliable than color:
Streak is a consistent property of a mineral.
Metallic minerals generally have a dark streak,
Non-metallic mineral do not
Two different colored forms of the SAME mineral: SAME colored streak

9. Hardness Mohs scale of hardness
Relative scale: comparing the hardness of a mineral to a known object.
1-10
Diamond being the hardest 10
Talc is the softest 1

10. Quartz (glass) fractures and shatters
into irregular-shaped pieces with
no flat planes
Cleavage: the tendency of a mineral to break along flat planes of weak bonding
Halite will cleave into many smaller
pieces each with 3 planes at 90°

11. Three examples of perfect cleavage – 3 flat planes (sides) fluorite, halite, and calcite

12. sulfur calcite Halite hematite feldspar Pyrite Mica Quartz Name Color
Luster
Light
Interaction
Streak
Hard-ness
Cleavage
Smell
Sol.
water
acid 1
Yellow
Dull
Opaque
1-2
none
Rotten
Egg! IS 2
Gold, metallic,
shiny
opaque
black 6
SS? 3
white
Pearly,
flat
Transparent
translucent
2-3
Perfect!
1 direction
peels 4
Clear
Double
refraction
None
perfect
YES!
FIZZ 5
Clear, white
Shiny,
Tastes salty
2-2.5
3 direction
90° angle
Yes!
dis-
solves
Dark red-brown
dull
Red-brown
3-4
None or
earthy SS 7
Salmon pink
Good
2 direction 8
Pink, clear
glassy
fractures
concoidal
sulfur
Pyrite
Mica
(Muscovite)
calcite
Halite
(Salt)
You can do the first one together as a class to go through the lab procedures.
hematite
feldspar
Quartz

13. Smells like rotten eggs
Mineral
Specimen Number
Color
Luster
Light
interaction
Streak
color
Hardness
number
Cleavage
Or Fracture
Soluble
in water
Solubility
in acid
Other Properties:
Magnetism,
Fluorescence
Mineral name
page 1
yellow
dull
opaque
1-2
fracture 
insoluble
Smells like rotten eggs 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
sulfur

15. Mineral Flow Chart in your notebooks copy the chart below
Color? dark or light _______________
Luster? Metallic or non-metallic ________
Streak? Black, brown or reddish________
Harder than glass? __________________
Cleavage? Yes, no cleavage, 1,2,3,4 planes
Mineral Name _____________