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This mineral is called hematite. It is like a red crayon! Draw with it on a white streak plate and it will make a red line. Hematite is used to give red paint its color.
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This mineral sparkles like gold! But it is not really gold. It is called pyrite and you can find it in all sorts of rocks like sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks. People call it "Fool's Gold" because
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This is gypsum! It often forms as a layer of the bottom of a salty sea. Sometimes it forms in sandy areas like deserts and little sand grains are trapped between the gypsum crystals. This makes the crystals
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What’s that on your chips? It’s a mineral called halite! Halite is salt. Take a close look at grains of salt. Don’t they look like mineral crystals? The sure way to tell of a mineral is halite is to taste
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This is calcite, the same mineral that makes the clam shells that you find on the beach! Perfect crystals of calcite allow you to do a special magic trick!
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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
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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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