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Published byLilian Grant Modified over 9 years ago
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What is this? Are you sure this is a rock? What else could it be? What tests could you do to determine the type of rock you just picked up?
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3-1 Properties of Minerals What is a Mineral? Identifying Minerals
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What is a mineral? To be a mineral a substance must have the following characteristics: Inorganic Solid Naturally Occurring Has a Crystal structure Definite chemical composition
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Inorganic A mineral cannot form from materials that were once part of living things.
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Solid Minerals are solid, which means they have a definite volume and shape. The particles in a solid are tightly packed together so they cannot move.
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Minerals are solid.
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Naturally Occurring Formed by processes in nature
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Crystal Structure The particles in a mineral form a repeating pattern
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Definite Chemical Composition A mineral always contains certain elements in certain amounts. Example: SiO2 is Quartz
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Color Color can be used to identify a few minerals This is not the best test because many minerals are the same color.
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Streak The streak test identifies the color of the powder of a mineral. While a mineral’s color may change its streak will not.
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Luster Luster refers to the way that light reflects off of the mineral’s surface.
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Density Density is defined as “Mass per unit volume.” In other words, how many particles are in a certain area.
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Hardness Hardness is a minerals characteristic of being able to scratch softer minerals and be scratched by harder minerals
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Moh’s Hardness Scale Moh’s Hardness scale Ranks minerals from softest (1) to hardest (10)
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Crystal Systems Each mineral has a particular crystal structure Example Cubic, hexogonal
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Crystal Structure
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Cleavage and Fracture Minerals with cleavage break along flat plains. While minerals with fracture break more jaggedly but the break can still have a pattern. For example: the image above has fracture in a sea-shell shape.
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Fracture
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Cleavage
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Special Properties Some minerals can be identified by special properties they have. For example: Magnetite is magnetic and Scheelite glows in the dark (fluorescence )
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