Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

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

Sulfur

A bright yellow native element mineral that forms around volcanic vents and hot springs and burns with a blue flame.

Tin oxide and the principal ore of tin, a dense, hard mineral mined since the Bronze Age for tin metal.

A rare platinum arsenide and the most important platinum-bearing mineral, forming bright metallic cubic crystals.

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

The brassy iron sulfide mineral famous as 'fool's gold,' known for sharp metallic cubes and a much higher hardness than real gold.

A rare igneous rock made mostly of carbonate minerals, source of the world's most important rare-earth-element and niobium deposits.

A silver sulfide that is one of the most important silver ore minerals, forming dark metallic crystals and wires.

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

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

An iron-rich orthopyroxene prized for its warm bronze schiller, a metallic-looking sheen created by tiny mineral inclusions.

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