minerals properties

Minerals have many properties such as its luster, streak, color, hardness, crystal system, density, cleavage, and fracture. Each one will help you identify which type of mineral it is. Luster is the light that the mineral reflects from its surface and examples of luster are: glassy, metallic, silky, pearly, greasy, waxy, earthy,and dull or submetallic. The color of the mineral is easy to find but it isn't that helpful to identify a rock since there can be many minerals with the same color. Another reason why it might no be helpful is because the same mineral can have different colors and when trying to identify you might get confused.


The streak of the mineral is the color of the powder. You can scratch the mineral with a white porcelain tile or if it is a light streak you can use a dark tile. Usually the color of the streak is different form the color of the mineral. Like biotite that is black and has a white streak and pyrite that is gold and has a black streak. A mineral can have different colors but the streak will always be the same for the mineral.

Hardness and field test is another good example for helping you identify what type of mineral it is. depending on which number it is in the MOHS scale it will tell you how hard it is. Like if it is ranked number one it could be talk because when it is scratched by a fingernail flakes come out. In this scale the lowest number means it is softer or the higher it is the harder it will be. For instance a diamond would be ranked 10 since it can only be scratched by another diamond.

density is the mass of a given space; and that's another property of the mineral. density varies depending from which material it was made, but the size has nothing to do. To find the density you will first have to find the volume and then divide it by the mass. The crystal system will help you identify which type of crystals it has depending on the number of sizes and the degrees of the angles. Last but not least is cleavage and fracture. They will be determined on how the mineral breaks. For example, is the mineral breaks up evenly and easily then it would have a cleavage, and if it doesn't break easily and it has rough surface then it has a fracture.