Identify My Rock Marble

You obviously don t want to crush your rock if you think it s valuable but that isn t necessary.

Identify my rock marble.

Igneous rocks such as granite or lava are tough frozen melts with little texture or layering rocks like these contain mostly black white and or gray minerals. Marble tends to be light in color. Marble can be scratched with a metal blade. Authentic marble is a metaphoric rock formed by applying heat to limestone forming crystals of calcite a relatively soft mineral.

Sedimentary rocks such as limestone or shale are hardened sediment with sandy or clay like layers strata they are usually brown to gray in color and may have fossils and water or wind marks. You can conduct a streak test with a piece of unglazed porcelain the back of a porcelain tile is ideal. The visible crystals in marble give it a characteristic granular surface and appearance but there are other properties used to identify the rock. Marble is considered to be a strong hard stone even though its primary mineral calcite only has a mohs hardness of 3.

It is composed primarily of the mineral calcite caco 3 and usually contains other minerals such as clay minerals micas quartz pyrite iron oxides and graphite under the conditions of metamorphism the calcite in the limestone recrystallizes to form a rock that is. Because of this the surface of marble shows scratches and wear.