cleavage; parting; fracture: conchoidal, fibrous, splintery, hackly, even, uneven or irregular
Mohs scale
tenacity: brittle, malleable, sectile, ductile, flexible, elastic
specific gravity, density
streak
luster: metallic, submetallic, nonmetallic (vitreous, resinous, pearly, greasy, silky, adamantine, dull)
luminescence: fluorescence, phosphorescence, thermoluminescence, triboluminescence
striation, twinning, polysynthetic twins
transparency: opaque, translucent, transparent
association, occurrence, anti-association
solid solution series
 

Describe and give a mineralogic example of each type of luster.

When inspecting a broken surface of a rock with a hand lens, what are the possible surfaces you would be looking at, and how would you distinguish between them?

We cannot always give a positive, unique ID on a mineral sample in hand sample. This lesson holds for rocks, fossils, and many other areas of geology and life. Explain the possible progressively less certain and perhaps tentative conclusions you might be able to draw.

If you are unable to reach a conclusion regarding the identification of a mineral using simple physical properties and observations, explain some techniques or more sophisticated tests you could use.

Given a set of observations and physical properties, you should be able to key out a mineral using the determinative tables in your text.