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Lecture #2
Learning Outcomes
Students should be able to: Identify various categories of minerals through their physical properties. Differentiate between twinning, cleavage, fracture, hardness, SG, streak and origin.
Habit: Terms
Acicular, Capillary, Filiform, Bladed, Dendritic, Radiating, Drusy, Fibrous Globular, Colloform, Foliated, Micaceous, Tabular, Lamellar, Plumose Granular, Columnar, Prismatic
Acicular
Slender, needle-like crystals: tourmaline, hornblende, arsenopyrite, rutile, apatite, sillimanite; selenite
Bladed
elongated crystals flattened like a knife blade: kyanite, tremolite
Dendritic
arborescent, in slender divergent branches, somewhat plantlike--native metals, pyrolusite
Radiating
divergent: zeolite; tremolite; talc pyrolusite, tourmaline
Tourmaline
Tremolite
Drusy
surface covered with a layer of small crystals--sugar like: calcite, quartz, sphalerite, pyrite
Fibrous
chrysotile asbestos
Botryoidal
bunch of grapes, example: heamatite, pyrolusite
Reniform
kidney like, examples hematite, malachite
Mammillary
Very large, example is malachite
Foliated
easily separable into plates or leaves: tremolite; hematite; graphite
Micaceous
similar to foliated but splits into very thin sheets: muscovite, biotite, chlorite
Tabular or lamellar
flat and platelike: barite, dolomite
Granular
composed of many individual grains of similar size: olivine, garnet
Prismatic or columnar
elongated crystals with identical faces parallel to a common direction: tourmaline, hornblende, apatite
Green tourmaline
Twinning
Crystals that are related to one another by some geometric relation.
Penetrative
e.g. Carlsbad in Orthoclase
Polysynthetic (multiple)
e.g. Plagioclase
Cyclic
e.g. aragonite
Biotite
Augite
Parting
Occurs when a mineral breaks along a twin plane, e.g. augite
FRACTURE
Terms that are used to describe fracture are:
Conchoidal: quartz Hackly: jagged and sharp Fibrous and splintery Uneven or irregular: rough & irregular surfaces
Conchoidal
An example of obsidian
SPECIFIC GRAVITY
This is the ratio of the density of the mineral to the density of water. It is dimensionless quantity. Substances with a specific gravity greater than one are denser than water Weight Air/(Weight Air-Weight in water) = specific gravity (SG), or SG = substance/water
SPECIFIC GRAVITY
Increases with increasing atomic weight of the cation. For example in the orthorhombic carbonates:
Mineral
Aragonite Strontianite Witherite Cerrusite
Formula
CaCO3 SrCO3 BaCO3 PbCO3
Atomic Wt SG
Ca 40 Sr 87 Ba 137 Pb 207 2.95 3.76 4.29 6.55
Streak Colour
Streak is the colour of the powder of mineral, obtained by drawing the mineral across the unglazed porcelain streak plate. The trail of finely ground powder generally has a more consistent characteristic color, and is thus an important diagnostic tool in mineral identification. Streak is particularly important as a diagnostic for opaque and colored materials, not for silicate minerals.
Hematite
Notable Localities
Muscovite Russia Dolomite Italy Andalusite Spain Sarabauite Sarawak, Malaysia Malayaite Malaysia http://www.mindat.org/
CONCLUSION
The twinning, cleavage, fracture, hardness, Specific Gravity, streak colour and notable origin are among the physical properties of mineral. Certain mineral displays a special characteristic or properties as an identification tool.