Rocks and Minerals

What this quiz asks

• Sandstone, limestone and shale all belong to which family of rocks?
• Which mineral, made of silicon dioxide, makes up most of the sand on a typical European beach?
• Marble forms when which rock is transformed by heat and pressure deep underground?
• Granite is made mainly of which three minerals?
• The steps on the Mohs scale are equal, so a mineral rated 10 is exactly twice as hard as one rated 5.
• Select ALL of these rocks that are igneous.
• Ruby and sapphire are both gem varieties of which mineral?
• Can an ordinary steel knife blade scratch a crystal of quartz?
• Emerald and aquamarine are both gem varieties of which mineral?
• Obsidian, the glossy black volcanic glass, has a regular crystal structure.
• Which Scottish thinker, often called the father of modern geology, argued in the 1780s that the Earth was unimaginably old?
• Select ALL of these gems that come from living things rather than being minerals.
• Order these minerals from softest to hardest.
• Which group of minerals is the most abundant in the Earth's crust?
• Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology deeply influenced which naturalist, who read it aboard HMS Beagle?
• Which metamorphic rock, formed from shale or mudstone, splits into thin flat sheets used for roofing?
• Pyrite, the mineral nicknamed fool's gold, is a compound of iron and which other element?
• In what year did the German mineralogist Friedrich Mohs introduce his scale of mineral hardness?
• Which banded metamorphic rock, with stripes of light and dark minerals, often forms from granite under intense heat and pressure?
• Which dark, fine-grained volcanic rock makes up most of the crust beneath the oceans?