Tomamaeite

The kinds of rock environments where the mineral typically forms — igneous, metamorphic, hydrothermal, sedimentary, pegmatitic, and so on.

The place where the mineral was first found and described — by convention, the reference point for the species.

Resistance to being scratched, ranked on the Mohs scale from 1 (talc, marked by a fingernail) to 10 (diamond, scratches everything below it). The classic field test.

Whether and how much light passes through a mineral, from transparent (you can see through it) to translucent, then opaque.

The colour of a mineral's powder, drawn by scraping it across an unglazed porcelain plate. Far more consistent than surface colour.

Mass per unit volume, in grams per cubic centimetre. A useful sorting tool: barite is twice as dense as quartz at the same size.

The colour seen through a polarising microscope — often unlike the hand-specimen colour, because section thickness and orientation both matter.

One of seven geometric families that describe a mineral's atomic symmetry: isometric (cubic), tetragonal, hexagonal, trigonal, orthorhombic, monoclinic, triclinic. Two non-crystalline classes — amorphous and icosahedral — also appear.

The full symmetry description of a crystal's repeating atomic pattern — 230 distinct groups, written in Hermann–Mauguin notation (e.g. P6₃/mmc).

The lengths of the unit-cell edges (a, b, c) in ångströms — the smallest repeating box of atoms that builds the crystal.

The number of formula units contained in a single unit cell.

The crystal habit observed at the type locality — the place where the mineral was first described.

Chemical elements that make up the mineral's ideal formula, listed by atomic symbol with their share of the total mass.