Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.

Gold

A dense, soft, intensely yellow native metal valued for millennia in coinage, jewelry, and electronics.

A soft, reddish native metal with excellent conductivity, mined for wiring, plumbing, and alloys like bronze and brass.

A dense, black, mid-rank coal with high energy content, widely used for power generation and to make coke for steelmaking.

A soft, lustrous white native metal with the highest electrical conductivity, used in jewelry, coinage, and industry.

Black volcanic glass with a warm bronze or coppery sheen produced by light reflecting off aligned microscopic inclusions.

A man-made glittering glass packed with tiny copper crystals, traditionally reddish-brown but also made in blue and green.

A black obsidian displaying a golden metallic sheen caused by light reflecting off aligned microscopic gas bubbles or mineral inclusions.

A feldspar gemstone that sparkles with metallic glints (aventurescence) caused by tiny reflective copper or hematite platelets.

A feldspar, better known as sunstone, that sparkles with metallic glints from tiny mineral platelets, an effect called aventurescence.

A black metallic manganese iron oxide famous for sharp cubic crystals, classically found with red beryl and topaz in Utah rhyolite.

A pink-red glass sold as obsidian, sometimes with metallic flecks; the strawberry color is manufactured rather than a natural volcanic glass tone.

A heavy, lead-grey metallic mineral with perfect cubic cleavage, galena is the world's main ore of lead and often carries silver.

An orthorhombic titanium dioxide polymorph forming tabular brown to black crystals with brilliant metallic-adamantine luster.