Minerals

Minerals properties

Properties are the traits or characteristics that belong to a specific thing. Minerals have their own properties in which we can use to identify them. We can identify minerals using these properties: luster, hardness, cleavage, and the streak.

In this project I learned how to identify minerals using them. A hardness of a mineral is how hard a mineral is. From 1:5 is a soft mineral and 5.5 to 10 is a hard mineral. How can we know? To know if a mineral is hard or no, we use glass plate. We scratch the mineral on the glass plate, if the mineral scratch it then it is a hard mineral if the glass plate scratches the mineral that mean it’s a soft mineral. We also can identify the minerals by looking at it whether it is metallic (looks like metal) or nonmetallic (doesn’t look like metal) this is called the luster. A mineral can be cleavage or fracture. A cleavage mineral is when it break in even way. A fracture mineral breaks in uneven way. Of course we don’t have to break the mineral to know whether it is fracture or cleavage, but we can tell by looking at it. Also we can identify the mineral by its streak, meaning we can scratch the mineral on a streak plate and by the color we get we can tell which mineral it is.

What did you enjoy the most about this project and why?
- What I enjoyed the most about this project was when we were identifying the minerals using the materials we were giving. I enjoyed it because it was interesting and I was so excited to learn about them.

What was most challenging for you during this project and why?
The most challenging thing was taking the pictures because we had to take the pictures too many times because sometimes it was blurry.

What new skills did you learn from doing this project?
I gained more patience by dealing with the camera and working on the lab since I had to change many things.

Is there anything that you could have done to improve any of your work? Explain

I would have worked on my lab more at home so it could be better than it is.