Reference

Please feel free to explore the links listed below to expand your interest of rocks and minerals. Our club is a member of The Southeast Federation of Mineralogical Societies, Inc. and is affiliated with the American Federation of Mineralogical Societies. Both of these societies have websites with resources to explore, including rock hounding locations and Kids activities. Click on the links below for additional resources.

Southeast Federation Mineralogical Societies, Inc

American Federation of Mineralogical Societies

Geology.com has resources for studying both rocks and minerals with beautiful pictures of bulk rock and mineral specimens. The website has a wealth of articles of Geology and Earth Sciences such as volcanoes, plate tectonics, satellite images and much more.

Click on image to explore rock types

Click on image to explore minerals

Free Training

Click the link below to go to the website Beyond 4C, which lists “23 Amazing Sites For Free Gemology Courses & Resources”. One of the most amazing classes is Dr Barbara Smigel’s Free Gemology Course. Barbara is an Emeritus Professor at the College of Southern Nevada. Her training website is outstanding for anyone wanting to learn about gemology !

Minerals Education Coalition

Informing and educating about minerals and mining with educators resources for K-12 education. Includes a mineral database and resources on mining.

Mindat.org is the world’s largest open database of minerals, rocks, meteorites and their localities. Mindat.org has been collecting, organizing, and sharing mineral information since October 2000. It has documented over 5884 mineral species with beautiful photos and extensive mineralogical data including polymorphs and crystallography. The example of Quartz is shown below.

Mindat.org is run by the not-for-profit Hudson Institute of Mineralogy.

Click on image above to visit the Mindat Quartz page.

Tools for the rock collector

All rocks and minerals are identified by simple physical property of color, streak, luster, hardness, crystal shape, cleavage, specific gravity and habit. The National Mineral and Commonwealth Peleontogical Collection, Geoscience Australia, and The National Museum of Australia Mineral Collections (specimens) have created a beautiful website that show these basic properties in the link below.

Hardness Test

Hardness is an important physical property of a mineral. The hardness will determine how jewelry can be worn.

Gemstone Refractometer

One of the most important tools a mineralogist has to identify gemstones is by measuring the gemstones refractive index (RI) using a refractometer. The refractive index is specific to each mineral and can measure a mineral to approximately 0.001 RI precision. The major requirement is that the test specimen has a polished face and be small enough to fit into the cover which is typical of a polished gemstone. The maximum RI that can be measured is 1.81 and cannot be used on the higher RI stones such as cubic zirconium and diamond. Below are two links on the refractometer use, including videos.

Reference Books

This list certainly is not extensive, but has some useful references to get started. Our club has a library at the workshop that members could check out.

♦ Minerals of the World by Walter Schumann

♦ Gemstones of the World by Walter Schumann

♦ National Audubon Society Field Guide to Rock and Minerals: North America