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A piece of hematite may look like just a dark gray blob. That might seem difficult to identify but with a streak test you can easily identify it! Just rub the mineral against a white streak plate and
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Like real gold, pyrite is a brassy yellow color. But unlike gold, pyrite is not worth large amounts of money. That's because it is a very common mineral. It is found in all three rocks types: sedimentary,
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You can find gypsum in sedimentary rocks, deserts, and caves. Large amounts can form in layers on a salty sea or lake bottom when water evaporates leaving the mineral behind. Gypsum sometimes forms when
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What’s that on your chips? It’s a mineral called halite! If you look closely at ordinary table salt, you will see that, just like other minerals, it looks like crystals. Halite is salt. In its natural
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Calcite is typically found in the sedimentary rock called limestone. Calcite is also in marble, a metamorphic rock, which forms when limestone is put under strong heat and pressure. Calcite crystals have
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Yuck! What's that smell? When water mixes with the mineral sulfur, a chemical reaction causes a small amount of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) gas is produced. Hydrogen sulfide is the same gas that makes rotten
...more You can use perfect calcite crystals to make an optical illusion called double refraction. Calcite has unique optical properties that split a ray of light into two beams that are bent at different angles
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