[Rockhounds] Fw: SOFTWARE FOR INDENTIFYING MINERALS

[Jim Daly]

I have to agree with Pete. I've seen many tables over the years, but none that worked well.
  In referring to non-analytical identification, Neal Yedlin said "You don't identify minerals, you recognize them". There's no substitute for looking at a lot of specimens and remembering what you saw.
  I've found the most useful approach (but far from foolproof) to first get a list of what's known from the locality from Mindat of some other source, then scan through pictures, particularly of specimens from that locality.
  Jim Daly

Pmodreski at aol.com wrote:
  I hate to be a wet blanket, but I really think the ideas for this kind of 
software are doomed to failure, or at any event, would be of minimal use.

There are just too many minerals with very similar properties; too few tests 
one can readily make, too many distinguishing features that require advanced 
equipment to determine, and too many cases that will yield ambiguous results 
or have a such large overlapping ranges of characteristics (variable color, 
crystal shape, and so on).

One could have a chance at doing this if you limited the mineral base to a 
relatively small number of common minerals (100 or so?), but nature doesn't 
confine itself to those few minerals; or included the kind of sophisticated 
tests that an amateur could not normally do (optical properties; chemical 
composition; X-ray diffraction).

It's fine to talk about this, but in practice, I think it wouldn't have much 
utility. I don't think it would ever be a replacement for the individual 
person learning about the properties and nature of minerals, and using his 
educated experience to guide him to the most likely candidates, and then refer to 
books or databases to narrow down the choices. And then of course, in many 
cases it will never be possible to make a positive i.d. without using those 
advanced methods like XRD. There are just too many, for example, hard, 
refractory silicate minerals that aren't ammenable to any simple tests for chemical 
composition; or, similar-appearing black metallic sulfide and sulfosalt 
minerals.

But it's a still good intellectual exercise to plan out how one would devise 
these databases and identification keys! Or to dream about how simple life 
would be, if they really worked to identify very many of those "mystery 
minerals".

Just "IMHO"... Pete



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