Name : Muhamad Irham M.

NPM : 3334170085

Resume youtube video titled “Identifying Minerals” by Mike Sammartano

Minerals have various physical properties such as color, hardness, lustre, breakage, streak,
etc. From these various physical properties we can identify a mineral.
Let’s start with mineral color. Minerals are found in various colors. Mineral color is the
easiest way to identify a mineral. We don't need a variety of tools to see the mineral color.
But, there is a problem if you only use color to identify minerals. The fact is there are several
minerals in nature that have the same color while those are different minerals. On the other
hand there are minerals that have different colors while those are the same minerals, for
example is quartz. The point is color is not a reliable characteristic to use for identifications.
Therefore we need to identify other physical properties.
Each mineral has a different level of hardness. To measure the level of hardness of mineral
we can use a piece of glass, then we need to scratch a sample of mineral onto the glass. The
glass has a hardness 5.5 Mohs scale. If it can scratch the glass then that mineral has a
hardness greater than 5.5, if it can’t scratch the glass then that mineral has less than 5.5.
Lustre refers to how light reflects off of the surface of a mineral. There are two types of
lustre, metallic and non-metallic. Metallic mineral has metallic appearance like a piece of
metal. If they do not look like metal, they are not metallic.
Testing Breakage probably is the hardest way to identify. Minerals break in one of two ways,
cleavage or fracture. Fracture is when mineral breaks randomly like olivine, while cleavage is
when mineral breaks unique and predictable like calcite.
Streak refers to the color of the mineral as a powder. To testing streak we need a streak plates
which are ceramic tiles, one is black and one is white, and what we do is rub the mineral
sample against them. So that the mineral sample leaves a trace in the form of powder on the
ceramic tiles. We need these two ceramics so that we can see more clearly because some
minerals leave streak of yellow or white which are more clearly visible on black ceramic tile,
on the other hand there are also leave dark streak that are more clearly visible on white
ceramic tile. Some minerals may not have a streak like calcite. So there are two categories,
colored or none.
Beyond color, hardness, lustre, cleavage, fracture, streak there are a category of other
properties that we might use to identify mineral. For example, Halite can be identify base on
taste, it salty taste. Some mineral have special properties like Magnetite is very magnetic, and
Calcite has double refraction and will fizz up when we drop some HCl on it.