Fun with Feldspars
This physical property best distinguishes quartz from feldspar, as feldspar has it but quartz does not
What is cleavage?
What is mafic?
Metamorphic texture formed from directed pressure on platy minerals
What is foliation?
This mineral is easily identified as being isometric, very hard, and usually red or purple.
What is garnet?
Coal forms from this environment
What are swamps?
This kind of feldspar is easily distinguished by having a salmon-pink color
What is potassium feldspar?
The deepest parts of the ocean are at these features along subduction zones
What are trenches?
Due to the creation of Pangea, the metamorphic rocks of the Appalachians are most like the metamorphic rocks of this country.
What is Scotland?
Quartz does not have cleavage, but does break with this kind of fracture.
What is conchoidal?
This lavender mica is used to make lithium batteries for electric vehicles
What is lepidolite?
These two metals substitute easily for one another in the feldspars like labradorite and albite
What are sodium and calcium?
This rock forms when dead diatoms and radiolarians create a siliceous ooze on the seafloor that may harden.
What is chert?
In subduction zones, the presence of this helps subducting oceanic crust to melt.
What is water?
These are metamorphic polymorphs of the element carbon.
What are diamond and graphite?
This variety of asbestos is determined to be not harmful to humans, and made up 95% of asbestos production.
What is chrysotile?
These feldspars are identified by the "record groove" appearance on their cleavage planes, called polysynthetic crystal twinning.
What are plagioclase feldspars?
Moderate amounts of natural gas can be extracted from this kind of rock in Ohio, which formed in a deep sea
What are oil shales?
These define different pressure-temperature zones within a belt of regionally metamorphosed rock.
What are index minerals?
An intergrowth of two mineral crystals in specific configurations
What is twinning?
This is a much safer method of coal mining that causes pollution and decimates ecosystems, as well as local tourism
What is mountaintop removal?
Quartz, feldspars, and feldspathoids belong to this group of silicates.
What are tectosilicates?
Today, due to relatively low magnesium and cooler temperatures of our oceans, marine invertebrates primarily use this mineral to build their shells instead of calcite
What is aragonite?
This "suite" of rock contains asbestos, altered pillow basalts, and chert, and forms when ocean floor is squashed onto another plate
What is an ophiolite suite?
This is Julie's favorite mineral and is characterized by having a hardness of 4, perfect cleavage in 4 directions so it forms tetrahedrons, and can be any color
What is fluorite?
This is one of the conflict minerals
What is gold? cobalt? tantalite? wolframite? cassiterite? diamond? (coltan is also fine)