Mineral Properties

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See Also: [Diamond Crystals] [Excalibur Minerals] [Hudson Institute] [Minerals on CDROM]
Mineral News was founded some twenty years ago and has developed a following of
avid mineral collectors seeking timely information about new finds and other items
of interest to the collector community. Articles are solicited from collector and scientific authors.

Minerals by Physical and Optical Properties Tables

Minerals by Calculated Radioactivity.

Physical Properties

Optical Properties

Hardness, Streak, and Luster Refractive index
Density

Cleavage and Fracture

Color

Other Sources of Mineral Identification

The "Collectors Corner" of the Mineralogical Society of America features an excellent, on-line,  mineral identification key by Alan Plante, Donald Peck, & David Von Bargen. The identification key is based on simple mineralogical tests such as luster, hardness, color and physical description for the most common minerals an individual is likely to encounter.

Search Minerals

Match term in Search Index:

Examples of Complex Searches

Example: "luster=metallic" or "luster=sub met*" "streak=gray" "lead=4*" finds all metallic minerals with a gray streak containing 40.0% to 49.9% of lead.
Example: "density-2.6*" "hardness-3*" "luster-vitreous" "color-white" or "color-colorless" for all white, vitreous minerals that have a hardness of 3 to 3.5 and a density of 2.6 to 2.69
Example: "sodium-3" "biaxial" "cleavage-00*" finds all biaxial minerals with a basal cleavage with 3 to 3.99% sodium.
Example: "luster-adamantine" "color-yellow" "cleavage-none" finds all yellow minerals with no cleavage and an adamantine luster.
Example: "iron-3" barium cerium finds all minerals with 3 to 3.99% iron containing cerium and barium.
Example: "intensity-o-3.5*" boron finds all minerals containing boron with the most intense x-ray d-spacing of 3.5 to 3.599 angstroms.
Example: biaxial-a1.7* bire-0.015* pleochroism "pale blue" finds all biaxial minerals with the lowest index of refraction from 1.7 to 1.799, a birefringence of 0.0150 to 0.0159 and a pale blue pleochroism.


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