Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Snow Quartz

An opaque, snow-white variety of quartz whose milky color comes from countless tiny gas and fluid inclusions.

The most common variety of quartz, milky white from microscopic fluid and gas inclusions, forming massive veins worldwide.

The pure, colorless form of crystalline quartz, valued for its clarity, abundance, and piezoelectric properties used in electronics.

Tabular quartz crossed by a milky white thread-like line marking where the crystal repeatedly cracked and re-healed.

A translucent milky quartz that shows a soft, floating blue-white glow when light passes through it.

A waxy, translucent microcrystalline form of quartz that serves as the parent group for agate, jasper, carnelian, and onyx.

A naturally banded quartz combining purple amethyst and white quartz in striking V-shaped chevron or zigzag patterns.

A prized Idaho picture jasper from Bruneau Canyon known for brown and cream orbicular egg-rock patterns and scenic landscapes.

A pale, silvery schist dominated by paragonite, the sodium-rich white mica, formed in aluminous metamorphic rocks.

A black-and-white striped chalcedony-quartz rock whose bold zebra-like banding makes it a popular ornamental and lapidary stone.

A pale chalcedony agate with cloudy, frost-like white patterning suggesting frost on a window or icy crystalline textures.

A banded chalcedony agate with bold alternating dark and light stripes resembling zebra markings, sometimes color-enhanced.

A chalcedony agate with soft, billowing cloud-like masses of gray and white suspended in a translucent body.

A banded variety of chalcedony quartz, classically black or black-and-white, long favored for cameos and beads.

A pink, manganese-rich variety of zoisite used as an ornamental gemstone, often mottled with white quartz and grey matrix.