Minerals Characteristics
Mineral Properties
Mineral Groups
Mineral Hardness
Examples of Minerals
100

Minerals must be in this state of matter, often referred to as having a definite volume and shape

What is a solid

100

The color of the powder of a mineral.

What is streak?

100

These minerals are shiny, reflect light well, and contain metal elements.

What are metallic minerals?

100

This scale goes from 1 to 10 and describes a mineral's resistance to scratching.

What is Moh's Hardness Scale?

100

This mineral has a distinct smell (rotten eggs and gunpowder) and taste.

What is sulfur?

200

All minerals come from material that is not or never was alive.

What is inorganic?

200

The way a surface appears and reflects light... "Metallic" and "nonmetallic" to describe this property.

What is luster?

200

These minerals are dull and do not reflect light well.

What are nonmetallic minerals?

200

This mineral has a hardness of 10 and can scratch all other minerals.

What are diamonds?

200

This hard, yellow mineral is often referred to as "fool's gold".

What is pyrite.

300

All minerals have this kind of structure.

What are regular, repeating, and crystal?

300

This is the white, rough, porcelain tile minerals are scraped along to produce a powder color.

What is a streak plate?

300

This is the element minerals must have to be considered as oxides.

What is oxygen?

300

The softest mineral on Mohs Hardness Scale, with a hardness of 1. It is often the main ingredient in baby powder.

What is Talc?

300

This mineral is often mistaken for lead, in a pencil.

What is graphite?

400

This property of minerals is that they are not man-made.

What is naturally occurring?

400

The tendency of some minerals to break along smooth, flat surfaces because of weak bonds between the layers.

What is cleavage

400

This group of minerals contains unbonded, raw elements, such as sulfur, carbon, gold, and silver.

What are the native elements?

400

This mineral can scratch fluorite, calcite, gypsum, and talc.

What is apatite?

400

This mineral is used in glass and electronics and occurs naturally as sand.

What is Quartz?

500

This characteristic of minerals is that they do not vary in which elements in them.

What is the same, predictable, chemical composition?

500

The ratio of mass to volume of a substance.

What is density?

500

A silicate mineral must contain these two elements.

What are silicon and oxygen?

500

This mineral will scratch apatite but be scratched by Quartz.

What is feldspar?

500

This reaction occurs as calcite is exposed to Hydrochloric Acid (HCl).

What is bubbling and fizzing?