Mineral Identification

Mineral Identification

What you’ll learn

1.  Describe physical properties used to identify minerals.
2.  Identify minerals using physical properties such as hardness and streak.

Physical Properties

• Mineral appearance
• Hardness
• Luster
• Specific gravity
• Streak
• Cleavage and fracture

Mineral appearance

• How it looks like
• What color is it?
• Which one of the following is gold? Identify by appearance.

Hardness

A measure of how easily a mineral can be scratched

Properties of Minerals

Luster

The way a mineral  reflects a light luster.

Either metallic or nonmetallic

Specific Gravity

The specific gravity of a mineral is the ration of its weight compared with the weight of an equal volume of water.

Gold has specific gravity of 19

It means gold is 19 times heavier than water.

Specific gravity

Streak

When a mineral is rubbed across a piece of porcelain tile a streak of powdered mineral is left behind.

 Cleavage

• Cleavage is the way that mineral breaks.
• Minerals that break along smooth, flat surfaces have cleavage.
• Mica has cleavage

and Fracture!...

• Mineral that breaks uneven, rough, or jagged surfaces have fracture.
• Quartz has fracture

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