Mineral Characteristics
Physical Properties of Minerals
Special Properties of Minerals
Rocks
Earth's Resources
100
A mineral.
What is a naturally occurring, inorganic, crystalline-structured solid with a fixed chemical composition?
100
The color of a mineral in powder form.
What is streak?
100
The fizzing of a mineral when coming in contact with a weak acid, due to a gas released from a chemical reaction.
What is effervescence?
100
The process in which rocks are changed by geologic activity into different kinds of rocks.
What is the rock cycle?
100
Coal is an example of this type of resource.
What is a non-renewable resource?
200
A solid whose atoms, ions, or molecules are arranged in a regular, repeating pattern.
What is a crystal?
200
Non-metallic glassy luster.
What is vitreous?
200
This mineral exhibits the special property of double refraction.
What is calcite?
200
A type of rock forming when magma or lava cools and crystallizes.
What is an igneous rock?
200
The four stages of coal development.
What are peat, lignite, bituminous, and anthracite?
300
Minerals containing a combination of these two elements make up the silicate group.
What are silicon and oxygen?
300
3 planes of cleavage not at right angles to one another.
What is rhombohedral?
300
When a mineral continues to glow once UV light is removed.
What is phosphorescence?
300
A simplified pattern explaining the order in which minerals form as magma cools, or crystallizes.
What is Bowen's Reaction Series?
300
These are the top two sources of energy currently being used worldwide.
What are oil and coal?
400
This scale is used to rank the hardness of various minerals.
What is Moh's Hardness Scale?
400
A curved type of fracture.
What is conchoidal?
400
A device used to detect radioactivity in minerals.
What is a Geiger Counter?
400
A coarse-grained, igneous texture resulting from intrusive formation.
What is phaneritic?
400
This resource is generally a layer above oil in most oil traps due to differing densities.
What is natural gas?
500
The basic building block for all silicate minerals.
What is the silicon-oxygen tetrahedron (SiO4)?
500
A crystal system which has three axes of unequal length but all intersecting at a 90 degree angle.
What is orthorhombic?
500
A silky band of reflected light exhibited in some minerals; often referred to as the "Cat's Eye Effect".
What is chatoyancy?
500
The metamorphic rock texture in which mineral grains are arranged in planes or bands.
What is foliation?
500
An alternative source of energy harnessed by tapping natural underground reservoirs of steam and hot water.
What is geothermal power?
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