Rocks and Minerals Testing Kit

This is a fantastic little kit! It has everything a beginning rockhounder will need to help identify rocks and minerals.I bought this to help my geology students understand the process of identifying specific minerals. Once they got the hang of it and, were able to remember the hardnesses of the testing plates, it was extremely easy for them to calculate specific gravity, separate calcite from quartz, and differentiate between magnetic minerals and regular old rocks.It’s a wonderful kit to get you started in understanding what hardness and streak means in identifying minerals. Next step would be to add a graduated cylinder, small digital scale, and a geologist hammer. Knowing the specific gravity and breakage (cleavage or fracture) of your sample will help in properly identifying your sample. Still, this is a great kit to begin with and for the price I can’t complain!

The minerals in the box were not labeled with anything but numbers, and there was no correlation of numbers to minerals in the instruction booklet. The numbers, which were 1-10, I assume were meant to correspond to the minerals assigned to Moh's hardness scale. However the mineral which was labeled 10 was clearly not a diamond, and the mineral labeled 6, which was supposed to be feldspar (orthoclase) was actually a duplicate of 2 (gypsum). This made me question the integrity of all of the minerals. The only reason I didn't rate this a 1 was because there was some effort put forth to assemble components of a hardness testing kit that was worth noting. In fact, if the minerals were actually correct (leaving out diamond, which is unnecessary and unrealistic), then it would be a great, inexpensive kit for demonstration purposes. I suggest more quality control is needed.

I just wanted a basic little Mohs hardness test kit so thought this would work. It came with a rusted nail, and instead of a porcelain scratch plate, it was a chunk of drywall/gypsum. I started laughing. I couldn’t believe it. Returned.

The Rocks and Minerals Testing Kit was a great kit other than the instructions, which in my opinion, are a necessity. Many of the words were misspelled, and the sentences had no structure and did not make sense. We used a science book as a guide for instructions. The price was great though in comparison to the many other kits available, so I guess it was worth it.

I am a geologist in real life so understand what this kit should look like. I bought it for a Geology merit badge class as a demo to a couple of 13 and 14 year olds. I would have liked this thing except the "streak plate" provided was compressed gypsum powder with a bit of fiberglass as a binder. Uhhh, a streak plate should be unglazed, fired porcelain. The rock is supposed to leave a streak on the plate - not the other way around. Streak plates are such a basic item for identification of softer rock that it makes the kit pretty useless. Also - no clue why the zinc or copper plates were included as these are virtually never used for ID purposes. Bottom line - right price if they fix the streak plate issue. Otherwise, buy something else.

This kit has everything I needed to test some stones I had, it is easy to use, and arrived quickly

Easy of use for children and family to enjoy together .

The "streak plate" is very soft and unusable. Everything scratches it. The glass plate has very rough and uneven edges. Use the supplied Garnet Board to soften the edges of the glass, or it WILL cut you! I would say that it's a good value, except that you will have to buy an additional streak plate.