List of Minerals
"The list of minerals on
this page is not meant to be complete."
Gold
Gold is a natural element and is often found so because it is stable and doens't easily react with other chemicals to form other minerlas. It is metallic and opaque, most often found as nuggets or grains rather than crystals (which do exist). It is dense, sectile, soft and easily bent. It is golden-yellow in colour but can be pale when alloyed with silver. It doesn not tarnish and makes excellent jewellery.
Iron
Iron is most often found in alloy with nickel, and even then it is a rare element to find on the Earth's surface. There seems to be mush more of it in the space because meteorites often contain iron and nickel. It is also believed that it is much more common in the earth's core. It is metallic and opaque, black or grey in colour and very magnetic. It is often granular or massive, although cubic crystals do exist.
Copper Mineral
Copper is also a native element, stable enough to not to react with other elements too much but it is sometimes found in minerals such as copper oxides etc. It is opaque, and pinkish when fresh, but tarnishes and turns into brown. It is often massive in habit (although crystals do exist), and it is soft and bends easily. It is often found in mafic and ultramafic igneous rocks.
Zinc Minerals
Zinc is a native element that is not found by itself but in minerals. Such minerals include but are not limited to Sphalerite, Willemite, Clinohedrite, Zincite, Smithsonite, Phosphophyllite, Fraipontite, Wurtzite, Staurolite, Jeffersonite, Rosasite, Goslarite, Herbertsmithite, Reinerite, Adamite and Hopeite.
Galena
Galena is a sulphide mineral, more exactly a lead sulphide. It is a common ore mineral and often found in lead-zinc-copper hydrothermal depositis. It is lead-grey in colour and often forms crystals but can also be found as massive habits. It is often associated with other minerals such as pyrite, chalcopyrite, sphalerite, calcite, quartz and fluorite.
Sphalerite
Sphalerite is zinc sulphide. It is not common on its own, but more often in alloy with iron. It is greenish without iron, black with little iron, and reddish with much iron. It has coarse crystals and is often massive, and it can form stalactitic or botryoidal aggregates. It is mainly found in hydrothermal lead-zinc depositis and it is a main zinc ore.
Sulphur Minerals
Sulphur is a natural element which is yellow and can either be massive, or occur in tabular or pyramidal crystals. It most often forms around volcanic craters and hot springs, but can also occur in some sedimentary rocks, or be the result of the breakdown of sulphide ore deposits.
Pyrite
Pyrite, aka fool's gold, is a common mineral in all types of rocks. It is metallic, opaque and while most known for its cubic crystals, can also have pyritohedral or octahedral crystals, or be granular, massive, reniform or potryoidal in habit. It is pale silvery-yellow when fresh but gets darker as it tarnishes.
Chalcopyrite
Chalcopyrite is deeper yellow than pyrite, but it is also metallic, opaque, and can occur in massive, botryoidal, reniform or compact habits. It is often found in hydrothermal sulphide deposits, where it has formed in hydrothermal veins. It is an important copper ore.
Azurite
Azurite. ©collecting-rocks-and-minerals.com
Azurite is a deep azure blue copper hydroxide. It can be earthy, nodular or massive, or it can form prismatic crystals. It is found in the oxidised zones of copper deposits, which have formed in limestone and other carbonate rocks. Like other carbonates, it reacts to HCl.
Malachite
Malachite. ©collecting-rocks-and-minerals.com
Hematite
Hematite is an iron oxide which can be very various in appearance. Specular hematite for example comes in a hexagonal, platy, shiny, silver-coloured crystal. Massive hematite is reddish brown and has a massive, earthy habit. Kidney ore is red and reniform. Hematite is found in hydrothermal veins, contact metamorphic rocks, volcanic fumeroles, and ironstones.
Calcite
Calcite, a common carbonate mineral, is either transculent or transpalent, and can come in many colours such as colourless, white, red, grey, green, brown, or black. It can be massive, fibrous, granular or stalactitic, or form prismatic, rhombohedral or scalenohedral crystals.
It is the main mineral in limestones and marbles.
Beryl
Beryl is a silicate mineral, which can either be massive and in other earthy habits, or form beautiful crystals that, depending on their colour, have a name amongst gemstones. It can be red, white, colourless, green (emerald), blue (aquamarine), yellow (heliodor), and pink (morganite). It forms mostly in igneous rocks related to granites, but can also be found in schist.
Clay Minerals
Clay minerals are very fine grained minerals such as kaolinite, illite, halloysite, bentonite, and green and brown nontronite. Under the microscope it can be seen that they consist of thin plates. They form mostly from the weathering of feldspars and other minerals rich in aluminium. They are often found in soils, sediments, and sedimentary rocks.
Olivine
Olivine is an iron and magnesium rich silicate mineral (like many other minerals, it is actually a solid solution, i. e. a group of minerals which vary in compositions between the iron-rich end member fayalite and the magnesium rich end member fosterite. They are most often green, but can also be brown, grey, white or yellow. It is found in mafic rocks.
Garnet
Garnet is also a group of minerals such as grossular, almandine, spessartine and pyrope garnet. Spessartine is greenish, while the others are reddish in colour. They all have cubic crystals (pyrope's are rounded cubics), while grossular is transculent and the others are opaque. Almadine is the one that occurs in garnet schist.
Corundum
Corundum is an aluminium oxide mineral, which, just like beryl, forms crystals that are known amongst gemstones, such as ruby (red), padparadscha (pink), and white, blue, orange, violet, green and yellow sapphire. But it can also be granular or massive, or mixed with magnetite (emery). Corundum is found in pegmatites, syenites, and gneiss.
Zircon
Zircon also forms crystals known as gemstones, however they are all called zircons. They can be red, yellow, brown, green, grey or colourless. Zircon can form irregular grains, fibrous aggregates or prismatic crystals. It can be transparent or opaque. Zircon can contain traces of uranium and be slightly radioactive.
