Online Mineral Identification

[karmazon]

Hi guys and gals, I have created an online mineral identification tool for rockhounds. You can find it right here: http://whatmineral.com/ I'd appreciate if anyone had any feedback for me, I want to make this as useful as possible. I hope this isn't considered spam as I'm not selling anything, just trying to help out. Thanks.
PS: The site might load slow right now as I'm getting slammed with traffic so please be patient

[daz]

Awsome pictures and info.
Only took around 1 minute to load all the pics. Great work thanks.

[darttrev68]

Not bad at all. Its a good starting point to identification of common minerals. It would be handy for a person starting out in mineral collecting. More advanced collectors should already know a lot of what is on here. Good descriptions of the different physical properties of minerals. This is something you need to know, if you are going to try testing the mineral you have found. I like the elimination style tests, could add a "reset all" button (which the "Home" button does anyway)

[Jimnyjerry]

Another one that may be of interest is

http://www.gemdat.org/gemindex.php


and for gems
http://gemologyproject.com/wiki/index.php?title=Table_Of_Contents

They may have been put up before

[toppster]

Looks pretty good ,the only thing I find with id books,websites is that they only show you museum quality pieces and only one photo of one specimen not several different forms of the one mineral and not the ordinary pieces that are most common which makes it harder to identify than it should be.Anyone else had this trouble also?

[RockAwayTX]

Great~!!
I did not see chrysoprase, though.

[darttrev68]

If you count all of the minerals in the list there is only around 220. Where are the other 4400? As I said before, this is a good starting point for a new collector as it helps identify some of the more common minerals.

Chrysoprase is not that common and technically it is not a stand alone mineral species - as it is nickel-bearing chalcedony. It is a "sub-variety" of chalcedony (cryptocrystalline quartz), so it may not be listed in this program. Most of the true varieties of quartz are there as well as chalcedony and agate. When you read the chalcedony page it says in the list of colours that it may be green - chrysoprase.

[darttrev68]

Toppster,

I agree! Where are all the pictures of the crappy, run of the mill pieces we can use for reference? Most experienced collectors have learnt to identify something because they gave it to someone else and asked "what the hell is this?" The problem with these museum quality pictures is that we fossickers rarely find anything of that quality. Most often it is a speck or stain on a piece of rock, which in Australia is usually covered in red iron oxide. I'm not a huge fan of these ID programs, however if it allows you to narrow down the probable suspects then it is a good start.

I also don't pick up as much crap as I did when I first started collecting. Now I seem to be the one that other people give their crappy rock to, and ask "what the hell is this?" Usually my answer is "leaverite"

Trev