<p>From my own experience of being a geologist for close to fifteen years, flow charts like that are of very limited use. The truth that you probably did not want to hear, is that it takes years of experience and education to learn how to identify minerals.</p>
<p>For example, olivine is defined in your chart as &quot;no streak, cannot be scratched, green, grainy&quot;. I know of many other minerals which are exactly like that (epidote is one example). I also know of olivine which doesn't satisfy these conditions - not all of them are &quot;grainy&quot; (whatever that even means?).</p>
<p>You can write a custom flowchart for the minerals in that specific box, but that would be rather boring because most of them are just silica in various forms. Anything more complex than that would lead to false positives and false negatives for anything that slightly deviates from the rubric (which is almost everything).</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-12-13T04:39:50.633Z
2021-12-13T04:39:50.633Z
Gimelist
<p>As a christmas present, I bought a box of minerals/rocks for my girlfriend, who recently got interested in geology. Unfortunately, she could not attend the identification class in university. The box contains:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>unakite<br />
snowflake obsidian<br />
red jasper<br />
rose quartz<br />
rock crystal (quartz)<br />
tiger's eye<br />
amethyst<br />
sodalite<br />
magnesite<br />
agate<br />
aventurine (green)<br />
calcite</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I have found some identification flowcharts such as</p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/oikll.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/oikll.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
<p>But that is missing, among others, magnesite, the various quartz variations and obviously doesn't contain the non-minerals.</p>
<p>I'd like to put together a flow chart so she can identify all those materials. How would one go to identify those rocks and minerals, in a flow-charty-manner?</p>

<mineralogy><rocks><identification-request>
Looking for Rock/Mineral Identification Flowchart
infinitezero
# Looking for Rock/Mineral Identification Flowchart

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-12-12)

As a christmas present, I bought a box of minerals/rocks for my girlfriend, who recently got interested in geology. Unfortunately, she could not attend the identification class in university. The box contains:

> unakite  
> snowflake obsidian  
> red jasper  
> rose quartz  
> rock crystal (quartz)  
> tiger's eye  
> amethyst  
> sodalite  
> magnesite  
> agate  
> aventurine (green)  
> calcite

I have found some identification flowcharts such as

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/oikll.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/oikll.png)

But that is missing, among others, magnesite, the various quartz variations and obviously doesn't contain the non-minerals.

I'd like to put together a flow chart so she can identify all those materials. How would one go to identify those rocks and minerals, in a flow-charty-manner?

**Tags:** mineralogy, rocks, identification-request


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2021-12-13. Score: 1

From my own experience of being a geologist for close to fifteen years, flow charts like that are of very limited use. The truth that you probably did not want to hear, is that it takes years of experience and education to learn how to identify minerals.

For example, olivine is defined in your chart as "no streak, cannot be scratched, green, grainy". I know of many other minerals which are exactly like that (epidote is one example). I also know of olivine which doesn't satisfy these conditions - not all of them are "grainy" (whatever that even means?).

You can write a custom flowchart for the minerals in that specific box, but that would be rather boring because most of them are just silica in various forms. Anything more complex than that would lead to false positives and false negatives for anything that slightly deviates from the rubric (which is almost everything).


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