Mineral Quiz for iPad

"Mineral Quiz" is a quiz which invites you to test your knowledge of minerals and geology. It may be used for testing and educational purposes for people well-informed about the nature. Game consists of 50 illustrated questions about different minerals. Each question has 4 possible answers. When you tap one of the answers, the default color of the pressed button is changed for a while to green (when it was the right answer) or to red (wrong answer). You have 3 attempts to give right answer. If you give it at the first attempt you will receive 3 points, at the second attempt - 2 points, at the third - 1 point. After 2 wrong answers the hint with chemical formula of the mineral will be shown to help you. Play the "Mineral Quiz" now to test and improve your knowledge of geology!

Category	Price	Seller	Device
Games	$0.99	Alexander Mokrushin	iPad

Reviews

Great app
MandaBaby18

You should give the option to choose what minerals you will be tested on specifically. (for geology students that might need the extra help!)

Could be better, poorly executed
SonicScrewdriver

There's a piece of common wisdom about mineral identification, which is that visual identifications are almost always useless. Obviously, some minerals are so distinctive that a picture alone suffices, but that is relatively uncommon. Unfortunately, this app relies solely on the user being able to select one of four options to match a picture. There are no other clues: no hardness, no mass or specific gravity, no acid reactivity, no magnetism, no radioactivity, no streak. If the user enters the wrong choice more than twice, the correct chemical formula is displayed - that's it. The photographs are odd too. Some, like the sphalerite and the pyrite, don't really represent characteristic habits for the mineral, which makes identification far more difficult. At least one, the molybdenite, is a photo I've seen before elsewhere. And the stibnite photo was also atypical compared to how one most commonly sees that mineral. Overall, the photos are pretty, if on the dark side, and of fairly good quality. Chemical families represented are extremely limited. The vast majority of the fifty here are sulfides (that is, minerals which are composed chemically of metal ions bonded to sulfur ions, pyrite, for example, is an iron sulfide): there are a few silicates, one or two oxides, and that's it, as far as i recall. This could be due to the fact that many sulfide minerals are visually distinctive, lending themselves to this quiz format. However, it in no way represents the diversity of the mineral kingdom, and if there's a future update, it should address this. As far as the app itself, it's pretty crude and has only limited functionality. When you complete the fifty item quiz, you are given the option to reset and start again or to look at other apps. When you reset, the order of the slides is shuffled, and you start again. It appears that there are only fifty slides to be identified. There is, unfortunately, no sense that this was made by anyone who loves either programming or minerals. On the plus side, it's cheap and will given experienced rockhounds a run for their money identifying sulfides. However, if you're looking for something to give a broad survey of minerals for identification, look elsewhere.