May I suggest acquiring my favorite book and this is one you should own. Audubon Field Guide to Rocks and Minerals (about $22). By reading it each winter when it is cold out, you will gradually become familiar with minerals and minerals make up rocks. Evening reading one page about an interesting rock or mineral will start you off. Try gold, silver, diamond, or your favorite gemstone first to pick up how the minerals form and are identified. By reading about rock types, you will become familiar with how different rocks form and change the minerals into other combinations of minerals.
After about three cover to cover readings of this book, reading a bit each evening, your friends will think you have a geology degree. One must accompany the read part with the handling and asking a million questions part. Just like having a computer guru to tutor you in computer problems, one needs a rock associate that can walk you through difficult rock and mineral questions.
The Audubon book discusses hardness, crystal habit, associated minerals that may be confused with like minerals, lots of pictures to ponder color, also discusses environments in other rocks where like minerals can be found. This one book has helped me get my rock education better than any one book.
Get a good 10X hand loupe, a magnifying glass will get you started until you find a good loupe. Learn the hardness scale. With loupe, hardness test understanding (see your Audubon book), you will be half way to mineral identification (if all else fails, see your guru or rock club associate).
Not selling anything but, on eBay, if you go to my "about me" page, that is a type in mjwy and click on the blue and red "me" next to mjwy (my user ID), you will get to my "about me" page and half way down the page of shipping disclaimers and instructions is my recommended book list. Most can be borrowed at the local library, or checked out on loan for the postage cost, or you may wish to purchase either on eBay or at a Hastings, or B. Dalton book store. I don't really sell any books on my book list. Have sold out. Maybe subscribing to Rock and Gem Magazine, or visiting Bob's Rock Shop Web
Site will help and be entertaining as well. Your local area may have a club to join for bringing your show and tell rocks in to get identified. American Federation of Mineralogical Societies can be looked up on Bobs Rock Shop site (the official home to Rock and Gem Magazine) and see what clubs are near you. An active rock club is a great place to learn locally occurring rocks and minerals.
For a condensed version, of the above, get the Audubon Field Guide, a hand lens/loupe, and a local rock guru, and get a near by club, or rock shop shop to visit regularly and handle all the rocks and ask all the questions you can.
Hope this helps all of you "do it yourselfers" out there.
Very good Saturday,
Dave Freeman
eBay ID mjwy
Dana wrote:
I am wondering how a person can learn to identify mineral content of rocks?
I am always seeing olivine 49.2%, ect. and so forth.
Are there any books I could buy or check out at my
library that would teach me to do this that you all
might recommend personally.
I am sure the one rock I have is a meteorite wrong... but the feeling I had when I found it thinking that
maybe I finally had found one was really great. So
now I am on a personal quest to find my own someday.
I read lots of sites with info. on the net over the
past two years. Many sites claim this slice is rare,
this one is that, so forth and so on. After all my
reading I do not really feel any smarter, only more
confused about pricing and rarity, what is real and
what is not, but I did learn about caring for them
once I finally get one and how to spot a meteorite
wrong. LOL
Also, are there any groups that go meteorite hunting together? I would be very interested to do something like that anywhere in the US or Canada.
Thank you for your time and input.
Dana Hawn on a Prairie Illinois, USA
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