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Many common substances found on Earth are made of minerals Mineral a solid, nonliving substance found in nature examples of minerals are table salt, gold, iron, and graphite in your pencil Minerals are building blocks of rocks Minerals are found underground and in the soil There are more than 3,000 different kinds of minerals Each mineral has it's own properties You can use the properties of minerals to tell each mineral apart. Most minerals are only one color like gold and pyrite Some minerals like quartz come in many colors You can NOT use color alone to identify a mineral. Hardness describes how easy it can be scratched - like quartz and diamond Streak the color of the powder left when a mineral is rubbed across a white tile and is a property. A mineral's streak may or may not be the same as the mineral's color. Luster describes how light bounces off a mineral and is a property. Soft minerals talc and gypsym and can be scratched with a fingernail Rock nonliving material made of one or more minerals granite rocks made of several minerals limestone made mostly of one mineral A rocks color gives clues about the minerals that make it up 3 kinds of rock are igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic igneois rock forms when melted rock cools and hardens magma inside earth - melted rock - hardens very slowly - an example is granite Lava melted rock that flows onto earth's surface - cools and hardens quickly - an example is Basalt sediment tiny bits of weathered rock or once living animals or plants sedimentary rock a kind of rock that forms from layers of sediment examples of sedimentary rock are sandstone, shale, and limestone Sedimentary rock forms where weathered and eroded materials are dropped - example at the bottom of rivers, lakes, and oceans metamorphic rock rock that has been changed by heating and squeezing -examples are gneiss, slate, phyllite