Frequently Asked Questions...
How to tell how many cleavage directions minerals have?
Trying to grasp this concept here.. but I am so confused.
Say I have this: http://facweb.bhc.edu/academics/science/harwoodr/geol101/Labs/Sediment/Images/Sed05.jpg
How many directions of cleavage are there? How can you tell?
And what's the difference between a cleavage and a fracture?
Thanks so much!
Answer:
First off, what is that in the picture, because I don't think it's a mineral. Only minerals have cleavage. There are several types of cleavage and it all depends on what mineral it is. If you know the mineral, all the information you would ever want to know about it can be found on this website.
http://webmineral.com/
Click on the "A to Z" button at the top of the page and look up your mineral. This website was suggested to me by my mineralogy teacher. Good luck.
I just tracked down your "mineral," it's a sedimentary rock. So it is impossible to tell its cleavage because rocks do not have cleavage. It is the minerals in the sedimentary rock that have cleavage.
If you have a mineral like halite (salt) you'll have to find the miller indices ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_index ) first before you can find its cleavage. Halites cleavage is {100} perfect, {010} Perfect, {001} Perfect.
So unless you're a geology major in your third year of college, I'm not expecting you to know anything about miller indices. So a far similar explanation would be to give you the basic types of cleavage. You'll have to look the examples up for yourself.
The first type is easy: no cleavage. There's also Platy cleavage, blocky cleavage, prismatic cleavage, cubic cleavage, and rhombohedral cleavage.
The key to recognizing them is just by looking at examples.
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