The color of a minerals powder is called this
What is streak?
This characteristic of a mineral means that minerals are formed from materials that were not a part of living things
What is an inorganic process?
Metallic, silky, waxy, greasy, earthy, pearly and glassy are adjectives that can describe this characteristic of a mineral
What is Luster?
Describes how light is reflected from a mineral’s surface
What is luster?
To be classified as a mineral, the substance must satisfy this number of requirements
What is 5?
A deposit of valuable minerals contained in rocks
What is an ore?
Hardness of a mineral can be determined by this
What is a scratch test?
The two terms that describe how a mineral breaks
What are cleavage and fracture?
The most useful clue to use when identifying a mineral
What is hardness?
1) Use a balance to determine the mass of the mineral sample 2) put the mineral sample and water to see how much water it displaces to get it’s volume (the volume of the displaced water equals the volume of the sample) 3) Divide the mass of the mineral sample by it’s volume to get the mineral’s _________
What is density?
What are rocks?
When a mineral breaks with flat even surfaces, it has ________
What is cleavage?
The color of a mineral and the color of it’s streak are often____________.
What is different?
This characteristic of a mineral means that a mineral always contains certain elements in definite proportions. (Ex. Quartz always contains 1 atom of silicon for every 2 atoms of oxygen.)
What is definite chemical composition?
This is used to rank the hardness of minerals using a ranking system from 1 to 10
What is the Mohs hardness scale?
The process by which atoms are arranged to form a material that has a crystal structure
What is crystallization?
The characteristics of minerals are that 1) it is naturally occurring, 2) it is a solid, 3) it has a crystal structure, 4) it has a definite chemical composition and 5) ?
What is “forms by inorganic processes”?
A solid that is formed from a repeating pattern of a mineral’s particles; having flat sides (faces) that meet at sharp edges and corners
What is a crystal?
This term describes how a mineral looks when it breaks apart in an irregular way (Ex. Quartz produces curved shell-like surfaces when it is broken)
What is fracture?
Geologists identify minerals by examining their _____; such as, streak, crystal structure, hardness, density, cleavage and fracture.
What is “physical properties”?