Minerals

Last week, I gave the students 12 mystery minerals.  The students' task is to identify the minerals by looking at their properties.  There are a series of tests that scientists perform on a mineral to identify what that mineral is.  Your children are using these tests to gather more information about each mineral.  Look at them in action!

Here we are observing the luster of each mineral.  Are they shiny?  Glittery? Dull?

Next, is the streak test.  Minerals often are identified by what color they are when they are ground to a powder.  Scientists use white and black tiles to determine what color the powder is.  There were a few surprises!

We also have been reading a book about rocks and minerals with partners.  We want to know EVERYTHING we can about how minerals are formed.

The third test we did was the hardness test.  We scratched each mineral with a penny and a nail to see its hardness on a scale of 1 to 10.  

We have one more test to conduct (magnetic test)....and then, we can determine the names of each of the minerals!