Mineral Identification Lab

In this 4 day lab, students will become very familiar with the procedures involved in identifying minerals.

Day 1: Students will learn what streak, cleavage, and luster are.

• Free access to the EarthScience.xyz website with high-quality images that can be zoomed in on to get the finer details.
• Students will test their mineral streak color.
• Students will observe whether their mineral samples have poor, good, or excellent cleavage.
• Students will also determine whether their minerals have a metallic or a non-metallic luster.

Day 2: Students will learn what the Mohs Scale of Mineral hardness is. Students will also find unique properties that their mineral samples might have.

• Free access to the EarthScience.xyz with high-quality images that can be zoomed into so students have great visuals on the mineral hardness scale and how the different unique properties would look like.
• Students will learn and then test different properties like double refraction, acid effervescence, taste, smell, feel, heftiness, magnetism, fluorescence, and many others.

Day 3: Optional activity. Practice using a mineral identification key (dichotomous key, flow chart).

• This optional activity will really demonstrate how students can identify minerals using a dichotomous key. They will not need actual minerals during this optional activity.
• You can find the activity here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Mineral-ID-Dichotomous-Key-Practice-3197977

Day 4: Use a dichotomous key and attempt to correctly identify all of the minerals in their kit.

• Students will use adichotomous key found on the EarthScience.xyz web
• Students will debate their own findings with their lab partners.
• After the debate students will choose a mineral name for each of their samples.

More instruction is and methodology is found in the document and the preview.