Analyze its chemistry, compare it to known minerals and voilà. But for geologists, this process can be a time-consuming ...

Now, much of the time, once you've been trained to identify minerals, you can use those skills to give a rock its proper name. The countertop has quartz, plagioclase feldspar, potassium feldspar ...

It’ll be a snap to identify gemstones once Robert Downs finishes his library of spectral fingerprints for all the Earth’s minerals. Downs is almost halfway there. So far, the associate ...

Minerals are of different colors, shapes, sizes and hardness. These physical properties are useful for identifying minerals.

A mineral-scouting instrument developed at Arizona State University (ASU) has found an outcrop of rock rich in carbonate minerals in the Columbia Hills of Gusev Crater on Mars.