Physical Characteristics of Rocks

Definition:

Geologist define rock as aggregates or mass composed of one or more commonly,

several of minerals. There are few exceptions to this rule: not all rocks are composed of
minerals-for example, coal. Engineers (or contractor) define rock to be hard, durable
material that can't be excavated without blasting. The definition is based on strength and
durability.

Minerals are naturally occurring inorganic substances of more or less definite chemical
composition, displaying more or less definite physical properties. As the basic constituent
of rock, minerals control much of rock behavior. Some minerals are very strong and
resistant to deterioration and produce rock with similar properties, while others are much
softer and produce weaker rock. More than different 2000 minerals are present in the
earth's crust. They can be identified by their physical and chemical properties; by standard
tests; or by examination under microscope.

Identifying minerals by physical properties

The most common minerals in Earth's crust can often be identified in

the field using basic physical properties such as color, shape, and
hardness. The context of a mineral is important, too –
some minerals can form under the same conditions, so you are likely to
find them in the same rock, while others form under very different
conditions and will never occur in the same rock. For this reason,
context (the other surrounding minerals and type of rock) can often be
used to rule out minerals that have similar color, for example. Although
there are many thousands of named minerals, only a dozen or so are
common in Earth's crust. Testing a few physical properties therefore
means that you can identify about 90% of what you are likely to
encounter in the field.
Because the physical properties of a mineral are determined by its
chemical composition and internal atomic structure, they can be used
diagnostically, the way a runny nose and sore throat can be used to
diagnose a cold. There are many physical properties of minerals that
are testable with varying degrees of ease, including color, crystal form
(or shape), hardness, luster (or shine), density, and cleavage or fracture
(how the mineral breaks). In addition, many minerals have unique
properties, such as radioactivity, fluorescence under black light,
or reaction to acid. In most cases, it is necessary to observe a few
properties to identify a mineral; to extend the medical analogy even
further, a runny nose is a symptom of a cold virus, allergies, or a sinus
infection among other things, so we have to use other symptoms to
diagnose the problem – a headache, fever, watery eyes, and so on.

Characteristics of Rocks
Color
The most obvious property of a mineral, its color, is unfortunately also
the least diagnostic. In the same way that a headache is a symptom for
a whole host of problems from the flu to a head injury, many minerals
share the same color. For example, several minerals are green in color
– olivine, epidote, and actinolite, just to name a few. On the other
extreme, one mineral can take on several different colors if there are
impurities in the chemical composition, such as quartz, which can be
clear, smoky, pink, purple, or yellow.

Part of the reason that the color of minerals is not uniquely diagnostic
is that there are several components of the crystal compositions and
structure that can produce color. The presence of some elements, such
as iron, always results in a colored mineral, but iron can produce a wide
variety of colors depending on its state of oxidation – black, red, or
green, most commonly. Some minerals have color-producing elements
in their crystal structure, like olivine (Fe 2SiO4), while others incorporate
them as impurities, like quartz (SiO2). All of this variability makes it
difficult to solely use color to identify a mineral. However, in
combination with other properties such as crystal form, color can help
narrow the possibilities. As an example, hornblende, biotite, and
muscovite are all very commonly found in rocks such as granite.
Hornblende and biotite are both black, but they can be easily
distinguished by their crystal form because biotite occurs in sheets,
while hornblende forms stout prisms (Figure 2). Muscovite and biotite
both form in sheets, but they are different colors – muscovite is
colorless, in fact.

Crystal form
The external shape of a mineral crystal (or its crystal form) is
determined largely by its internal atomic structure, which means that
this property can be highly diagnostic. Specifically, the form of
a crystal is defined by the angular relationships between crystal faces
(recall Steno's Law of Interfacial Angles as discussed in our Minerals
I module). Some minerals, like halite (NaCl, or salt) and pyrite (FeS) have

a cubic form (see Figure 3, left); others like tourmaline (see Figure 3,
middle) are prismatic. Some minerals, like azurite and malachite, which
are both copper ores, don't form regular crystals, and are amorphous.

Unfortunately, we don't always get to see the crystal form. We see

perfect crystals only when they have had a chance to grow into a cavity,
such as in a geode. When crystals grow in the context of cooling magma,
however, they are competing for space with all of the other crystals that
are trying to grow and they tend to fill in whatever space they can. The
shape of the crystal can vary quite a bit depending on the amount of
space available, but the angle between the crystal faces will always be
the same

Hardness
The hardness of a mineral can be tested in several ways. Most
commonly, minerals are compared to an object of known hardness
using a scratch test – if a nail, for example, can scratch a crystal, than
the nail is harder than that mineral. In the early 1800s, Friedrich Mohs,
an Austrian mineralogist, developed a relative hardness scale based on
the scratch test. He assigned integer numbers to each mineral, where 1
is the softest and 10 is the hardest.
The scale is not linear (corundum is actually 4 times as hard as quartz),
and other methods have now provided more rigorous measurements
of hardness. Despite the lack of precision in the Mohs scale, it remains
useful because it is simple, easy to remember, and easy to test. The
steel of a pocketknife (a common tool for geologists to carry in the field)
falls almost right in the middle, so it is easy to distinguish the upper half
from the lower half. For example, quartz and calcite can look exactly
the same – both are colorless and translucent, and occur in a wide
variety of rocks. But a simple scratch test can tell them apart; calcite will
be scratched by a pocketknife or rock hammer and quartz will not.
Gypsum can also look a lot like calcite, but is so soft that it can be
scratched by a fingernail.
Variations in hardness make minerals useful for different purposes. The
softness of calcite makes it a popular material for sculpture (marble is
made up entirely of calcite), whereas the hardness of diamond means
that it is used as an abrasive to polish rock

Luster
The luster of a mineral is the way that it reflects light. This may seem
like a difficult distinction to make, but picture the difference between
the way light reflects off a glass window and the way it reflects off of a
shiny chrome car bumper. A mineral that reflects light the way glass
does has a vitreous (or glassy) luster; a mineral that reflects light like
chrome has a metallic luster. There are a variety of additional
possibilities for luster, including pearly, waxy, and resinous (see
pictures in Figure 5). Minerals that are as brilliantly reflective as
diamond have an adamantine luster. With a little practice, luster is as
easily recognized as color and can be quite distinctive, particularly for
minerals that occur in multiple colors like quartz.
Density
The density of minerals varies widely from about 1.01 g/cm3 to about
17.5 g/cm3. The density of water is 1 g/cm3, pure iron has a density of
7.6 g/cm3, pure gold, 17.65 g/cm3. Minerals, therefore, occupy the range
of densities between water and pure gold. Measuring the density of a
specific mineral requires time-consuming techniques, and most
geologists have developed a more intuitive sense for what is "normal"
density, what is unusually heavy for its size, and what is unusually light.
By "hefting" a rock, experienced geologists can usually guess if the rock
is made up of minerals that contain iron or lead, for example, because
it feels heavier than an average rock of the same size (see
our Density module for more information).
Cleavage and fracture
Most minerals contain inherent weaknesses within their atomic
structures, a plane along which the bond strength is lower than the
surrounding bonds. When hit with a hammer or otherwise broken, a
mineral will tend to break along that plane of pre-existing weakness.
This type of breakage is called cleavage, and the quality of the cleavage
varies with the strength of the bonds. Biotite, for example, has layers of
extremely weak hydrogen bonds that break very easily, thus biotite
breaks along flat planes and is considered to have perfect cleavage (see
Figure 6). Other minerals cleave along planar surfaces of varying
roughness – these are considered to have good to poor cleavage

Some minerals don't have any planes of weakness in their atomic

structure. These minerals don't have any cleavage, and instead they
fracture. Quartz fractures in a distinctive fashion, called conchoidal, which
produces a concave surface with a series of arcuate ribs similar to the way
that glass fractures (see Figure 6). For quartz, in fact, this lack of
cleavage is a distinguishing property.
Some minerals don't have any planes of weakness in their atomic
structure. These minerals don't have any cleavage, and instead they
fracture. Quartz fractures in a distinctive fashion, called conchoidal, which
produces a concave surface with a series of arcuate ribs similar to the way
that glass fractures (see Figure 6). For quartz, in fact, this lack of
cleavage is a distinguishing property.

Physical properties still provide the main means for identification of

minerals, however, though they are no longer used to group minerals
(from the example above, corundum is an oxide while diamond is a
pure element, so by Dana's system, they are in separate groups). A
composition-based grouping highlights some common mineral
associations that allow geologists to make educated guesses about
which minerals are present in a rock, even with only a quick glance. By
far, the most common minerals are the silicates, which make up 90% of
Earth's crust. Of the many hundreds of named silicate minerals, only
about eight are common, one of which is quartz. The uncommon
minerals are critical, however, as they include economically important
ones such as galena, which is the primary ore for lead, and apatite, a
phosphate mined for phosphoric acid that is added to fertilizers. The
discovery of new ore deposits depends on the ability of geologists to
identify what they see in the field and recognize unusual mineral
occurrences that should be explored in more detail in the laboratory. A
hand lens, a pocketknife, and a lot of practice still provide the easiest
and cheapest methods of identifying minerals.