  Low-baryon number lumps of strange quark matter, strangelets, are presently
searched for in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion experiments at CERN and
Brookhaven. This paper gives an overview of the physical properties of
strangelets with emphasis on experimental signatures such as mass and charge.
Direct solutions of the Dirac equation with MIT bag model boundary conditions
are applied and compared to calculations based on a smoothed density of states,
as well as to simple mass-formulae based on the MIT bag. Most strangelet
properties can be understood within an approximation including bulk, surface
and curvature energy contributions.
