How to Identify Minerals: 10 Steps to Mineral Identification

Taste is definitive for halite (rock salt), of course, but a few other evaporite minerals also have distinctive tastes. Just touch your tongue to a fresh face of the mineral and be ready to spit—after all it's called taste, not flavor. Don't worry about taste if you don't live in an area with these minerals.

Fizz means the effervescent reaction of certain carbonate minerals to the acid test. For this test, vinegar will do. (Learn more about the acid test)

Heft is how heavy a mineral feels in the hand, an informal sense of density. Most minerals are about three times as dense as water, that is, they have a specific gravity of about 3. Make note of a mineral that is noticeably light or heavy for its size. Galena, on the right, is distinctly heavy. Sulfides and oxides tend to be dense.

You don't always need to do these tests, but remember them for the times they're called for.