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Identity HelpMineral Identification Spreadsheet

15th Mar 2009 02:12 UTCJohn M Wenham

Hi there,

Wondering if there is such a thing as a minerals spreadsheet to help me in my quest for identifying minerals. I'm doing a Diploma in Geoscience at college and while we can make as many notes as we like about different minerals and their properties etc I'm just trying to come up with any easy way of having all the information on hand and sorted into their groupings especially during my exam later this week.

Thanks

John

15th Mar 2009 03:43 UTCBryan Manke

John,

That's a tough one. My mineralogy class was deemed the hardest class at my college, mainly due to the professor. It depends on what your exam entails--is it mineral ID of minerals in the lab, or mineral ID of minerals on paper based on their properties? My tests were always of minerals we studied hands on, which made it easier. The spreadsheet of all minerals & their properties would be huge and conflicting. Mineral ID is hard, just check the message board dedicated to it.

Your best bet is to know the tests you can do manually and correlate it with the more common minerals you'd see in your lab. I'm sure your exam will be based on minerals you've dealt with during the semester. If that's the case, spend extra time handling the specimens after class. There really is no short list (i.e.holy grail) you're looking for, unless you tell us what the test is about. By the way, I find the more passionate you are about anything (minerals, art, etc), the more you will retain.

15th Mar 2009 06:21 UTCRalph S Bottrill 🌟 Manager

My old Danas Manual of Mineralogy has a useful list of determinative tables but I am not sure the current one does? This lists minerals by lustre, hardness, colour, SG etc. (not always definitive of course, but handy if you have a limited number of species to work with). We had a similar set of tables when I studied geology, but I found there was no substitute for experience - i.e. getting familiar with the look and feel of the minerals.

Ralph

15th Mar 2009 13:44 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/collectors_corner/id/mineral_id_keyi1.htm

15th Mar 2009 20:25 UTCJohn M Wenham

To Bryan, Ralph, and David,

Thanks fellas for your replies so far, and yes I would have to agree that there is nothing like getting in there and touching and feeling and all that kind of stuff, but my main problem is this exam that is set for this Friday.

Long story short is and its mine and others feelings that this subject is being thrown at us at a 100mph and we just are not getting enough time to put in and learn properly. This is our lecturers first year of teaching and unfortunately at the moment he is very robotic and expects us all to have photographic and instant recall type memories. Nice enough guy but he has a long way to go before he can call himself a teacher.

Essentially he will be testing us on a list of 20-30 of the most common types of minerals. He threw me off last week when he gave us a drill core sample and wanted to know what minerals were in the core. Well to be honest the mineral size of the sample was so small that for me it was hard to tell what was in it. I could not do a hardness or streak test along with most other tests except magnet and HCA which were both negative.The only other way was when it was wet it had a pink colour to it and so I guessed rightly or wrongly that it may have been some sort of Feldspar.

David thanks for that mineral identification key, if only I knew how to put that table into a spreadsheet type of form. I did come across one spread sheet here which may have to do for the time being. Sorry I'm stressing but this exam for whatever reason is counting towards 75% of this subjects total.

I shall keep you informed, and thanks again to all. :D

Cheers

John

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