Our Rock Collections

		Our Rock Collections

01/13/04

Each student in our class started a rock collection of 10 rocks. As we continued our study of rocks we could change any or all of the rocks in our collection. We picked 5 of our favorite rocks and made a chart to show some of the properties of minerals that were in our rocks. These properties are:

colour- one mineral can have more than one colour so colour alone isn't enough to decide what minerals are in a rock.

streak- we rubbed our rock on a streak plate. The colour wasn't always the same as what the rock looked like. A mineral always makes the same colour streak.

lustre-we looked to see if the rock was shiny. If it was we said it was metallic, if it wasn't shiny we put down non-metallic.

hardness-we tried scratching our rocks with a fingernail, a penny, and a nail.

crystal shape- we looked with our magnifying glasses to see if we could see a repeated shape that made up the minerals in our rocks

magnetism- we used a magnet to see if our rocks were attracted to a magnet.

Our Collections; Her are a few of our collections with charts.

Characteristics of Rocks in Our Collections: Cindy’s Collection

Number of rock from my collection	1	2	3	4	5
Color	Brown	Every color	Brownish purplish	pink	Pink
Streak	Brown	pink	Brown	pink	pink
Lustre	no	yes	no	no	no
Hardness	scratched with fingernail Moh's 2	scratched with nail 7or under	scratched with nail 7 or under	scratched with penny 3	scratched with penny 3
Crystal Shape	yes	no	no	No	yes
Magnetism	no	No	no	No	no

Characteristics of Rocks in Our Collections: Nick’s Collection

Number of rock from my collection	1	8	2	5	6
Colour	Gray	white	Brownish-white	Rainbow -coloured	Gray
Streak	white	white	Brown	white	white
Lustre	Non-metallic	metallic	Non-metallic	Non-metallic	Non-metallic
Hardness	7	9	3	3	3
Crystal Shape	Yes	no	yes	no	yes
Magnetism	Yes	no	no	no	No

Characteristics of Rocks in Our Collections: Renee’s Collection

Number of rock from my collection	5	1	7	9	10
Colour	Blue Brown White grey	White	Pink Pale	Grey	Grey black
Streak	White	Orange White	Pink	Silver-ish	Silver-ish
Lustre	Non-metallic	Non-metallic	Non- metallic	metallic	metallic
Hardness		scratched with penny 3	scarathed with fingernail 2	scratched with nail 7	scratched with nail 7
Crystal Shape	Square	No	No	No	No
Magnetism	No	no	no	maybe	some

Ross's Collection

Characteristics of our Rock Collections: Ross’ collection

Number of rock from my collection	1	2	3	4	5
Colour	gray	brown	brown	pink	white
Streak	white	white	white	pink	white
Lustre	metallic	metallic	metallic	non-metallic	non-metallic
Hardness	8	1	1	4	2
Crystal Shape	triangular	cylinder	cylinder	non	non
Magnetism	non	non	non	non	non

This site was last updated 01/13/04