Middle School Inquiry Lab on Properties of Minerals
In this lab students will evaluate the properties of known minerals. They will sort the minerals based on color, streak, luster, and hardness. After verifying their results, they will test two unidentified samples and determine their identity.
Each inquiry lab will contain an essential question that will drive the lesson and make students think. For this lesson, the essential question is:
- How can minerals be identified by their physical properties?
BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND MATERIALS LIST:
Students will begin the lab by reading the essential question and background information. This can be done individually, as lab groups, or as a whole class. If you consider lab groups, you also might include some type of whole class formative checks before digging into the lab.
Materials List:
- mineral tray
- quartz
- fluorite
- mica-biotite
- calcite
- graphite
- magnetite
- streak plate
- copper penny (dated 1980 or later)
- steel nail
- mineral identification chart
PROCEDURE:
This inquiry lab allows students to test known minerals for these properties: color, streak, luster, and hardness. Students will see how testing for only one property is not an effective way of identifying minerals.
After students have concluded testing the known minerals, students will apply their understanding of how geologist use these same tests to identify minerals. They will be given unnamed minerals and asked to use the same tests to correctly identify two mystery minerals.
CONCLUSION
Students will go back to the essential question and write a CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) to conclude the lab. Once completed, students will reflect back on their learning by answering the following questions:
- What is the identity of your first mystery sample? What is the reasoning for this choice?
- What is the identity of your second mystery sample? What is your reasoning for this choice?
- If a student was given two different mineral samples of the same color, how could the student identify the minerals?
MODIFIED AND INDEPENDENT INQUIRY VERSIONS
All of the Kesler Science inquiry labs come with three different modification levels. Each lab is differentiated using the icons below.
STANDARDS ALIGNMENT
TEKS: 6.6C – Test the physical properties of minerals, including hardness, color, luster, and streak.
