Mineral

The mineral is the natural and organic substance with a quimic composition. The minerals are formed for atoms of chemicals elements.

PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF MINERALS

The comun physical properties are the:

- Color

Colour is an important feature of minerals as they can help their identification but also can be a lie. There are a lot of minerals may have diferents colors and in some cases they have a different names depending on color.

- Lustre

The lustre indicates how the mineral surface interacts with incident light depending in particular the index of refraction of light. The type and intensity of the lustre varies with the nature of the mineral sufrace.

- Color Raw

The coulor of the raw of a mineral is the color of the dust that it is shaped in line tubbing the mineeral on a surface not glazed porcelain. It is a better diagnostic test that color because it is more constant. Often does not match the color of line with what we observe in the ore. For example, the raw of all quarts, whatever their color is always white.

- Hardness

The hardness is the resistance of a mineral to be scratched by another material. It is a very important property. To identify a mineral they using a relative scale called Mohs based on 10 minerals. Talc is the softest and the diamond are the hardest

- Toughness

The toughness is a measure of cohesion of the mineral and the resistance to being broken. We can speak that the minerals are fragile and tenacious. This is not the same, the toughness and the hardness. For example, the case of diamond. The diamons is the hardest mineral but it has a relatively low toughness because they can break easily on impact.

The most important minerals are the:

The feldspar :

The corundum:

The calcite:

The apatite:

Talc:

Quars:

Diamond:

The plaster:

The fluorite:

The topaz: