Purple minerals

Purple minerals

The most common purple minerals are amethyst, a variety of quartz, and purple fluorite. Because they can be exactly the same colour, we have to use different properties, like crystal shape and hardness to distinguish between them. Quartz is harder and will always scratch fluorite. Fluorite often has cubic or octahedral crystals but you will never find cubic or octahedral quartz crystals!

 

 

purple fluorite mineral

 

charoite mineral
lepidolite mineral
amethyst mineral
Fluorite (top right), charoite, lepidolite and amethyst are all examples of purple minerals.

 

Back to the colour wheel

 

About this resource
 

Science topic: Earth, Minerals

Key Stage:

Type: Information

Keywords: mminerals, chemicals, chemical elements