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.
mineralCopper
A soft, reddish native metal with excellent conductivity, mined for wiring, plumbing, and alloys like bronze and brass.
mineralSilver
A soft, lustrous white native metal with the highest electrical conductivity, used in jewelry, coinage, and industry.
mineral
Galena
A heavy, lead-grey metallic mineral with perfect cubic cleavage, galena is the world's main ore of lead and often carries silver.
mineralBronze Sheen Obsidian
Black volcanic glass with a warm bronze or coppery sheen produced by light reflecting off aligned microscopic inclusions.
igneous
Bismuthinite
A soft lead-gray bismuth sulfide that is an important ore of bismuth, forming metallic needle-like and bladed crystals.
mineral
Stibnite
Stibnite is the chief ore of antimony, famous for its dramatic clusters of bladed, silvery-gray metallic crystals.
mineral
Sperrylite
A rare platinum arsenide and the most important platinum-bearing mineral, forming bright metallic cubic crystals.
mineral
Acanthite
A silver sulfide that is one of the most important silver ore minerals, forming dark metallic crystals and wires.
mineral
Stephanite
A black metallic silver antimony sulfide, historically a notable silver ore known as brittle silver ore.
mineral
Hematite
The principal iron ore, a heavy iron oxide ranging from metallic silver-gray to earthy red, always leaving a tell-tale red-brown streak.
mineral
Bronzite
An iron-rich orthopyroxene prized for its warm bronze schiller, a metallic-looking sheen created by tiny mineral inclusions.
mineral
Brookite
An orthorhombic titanium dioxide polymorph forming tabular brown to black crystals with brilliant metallic-adamantine luster.
mineral
Sunstone
A feldspar gemstone that sparkles with metallic glints (aventurescence) caused by tiny reflective copper or hematite platelets.
gemstone
Skutterudite
A metallic cobalt-nickel arsenide, an important cobalt ore, named for the Skutterud mines of Norway.
mineralIridescent Obsidian
A black volcanic glass that displays shifting rainbow or metallic sheen from microscopic nanoparticle layers trapped inside.
igneous
Cobaltite
A silver-white cobalt arsenic sulfide that is a leading ore of cobalt, forming bright metallic cubic and pyritohedral crystals.
mineralGold Sheen Obsidian
A black obsidian displaying a golden metallic sheen caused by light reflecting off aligned microscopic gas bubbles or mineral inclusions.
igneous