Search Hints & Glossary of Terms

How the Mineral Full Text Search works:

The search program (WAIS) takes the list of words and retrieves the HTML documents that contain any of the words in the list. There are no logical operators such as AND or OR or NOT (at least not yet). Documents are assigned a value based upon

How many times the words appear in the document.
How frequently the words occur (words that only appear in a few documents are more valuable).
Capitalized phrases (such as Calcium Carbonate) are also compared as matching word pairs and are assigned a high value.

All words do not need to match, but more matches result in a higher score. At most 40 documents are retrieved.

Search Hints

Use our descriptive words (see below) such as vitreous or perfect (meaning vitreous luster or perfect cleavage)

Use capitalized word pairs when possible and applicable (such as Elmwood, Tennessee).

Words that appear in all mineral descriptions (such as luster or cleavage) are useless, except when used as capitalized word pairs (Botryoidal Habit).

At present, phrases with numeric values do not work well (such as "hardness 6"), and ranges do not work at all. We hope to improve this behavior in the future.

Glossary of Terms

This section describes the various mineral terms as we use them in the Physical Characteristics section of each mineral description. Using our definitions will improve searching success!

Luster: silky; greasy; vitreous; pearly; metallic; dull
Transparency: opaque; translucent; transparent
Crystal System: monoclinic; cubic; tetragonal; orthorhombic; triclinic; trigonal; hexagonal
Crystal Habits: any of the following may be curved or distorted; prismatic; dendritic; acicular; tabular; botryoidal; mammilary; granular; massive
Cleavage: perfect; distinct; indistinct; absent
Fracture: uneven; conchoidal; hackly; splintery
Hardness: 1 - Talc; 2 - Gypsum; 3 - Calcite; 4 - Fluorite; 5 - Apatite; 6 - Orthoclase; 7 - Quartz; 8 - Topaz; 9 - Corundum; 10 - Diamond
Specific Gravity: light; average; heavy; very heavy

OTHER:

It may help to name associated minerals such as quartz or pyrite
It may help to identify the host rock, such as pegmatite or schist
It may help to identify where it was found or mined, such as North Carolina
It may help to list any likely elements in the chemical name, such as lithium or sulfide (possibly guessed from density or associations)
Do not name negatives ("no cleavage") - it doesn't work
Do name any known unusual characteristics, such as "radioactive" or "fluorescent"

EXAMPLES:

yellow orthorhombic transparent prismatic
silky translucent botryoidal green
metallic blue sulfide
radioactive opaque green
heavy red hexagonal North Carolina