Abswurmbachite is a

copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

manganese Manganese is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Mn and atomic number 25. It is a hard, brittle, silvery metal, often found in minerals in combination with iron. Manganese was first isolated in the 1770s. It is a transition m ...

silicate mineral Silicate minerals are rock-forming minerals made up of silicate groups. They are the largest and most important class of minerals and make up approximately 90 percent of Earth's crust. In mineralogy, the crystalline forms of silica (silicon dio ...

((Cu,Mn²⁺)Mn³⁺₆O₈SiO₄). It was first described in 1991 and named after

Irmgard Abs-Wurmbach Irmgard Abs-Wurmbach (December 19, 1938 – April 8, 2020) was a German mineralogist and the mineral Abswurmbachite is named after her. She was professor at Technische Universität Berlin (TU-Berlin). Life She was professor for applied miner ...

(born 1938), a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

mineralogist Mineralogy is a subject of geology specializing in the scientific study of the chemistry, crystal structure, and physical (including optical mineralogy, optical) properties of minerals and mineralized artifact (archaeology), artifacts. Specific s ...

. It crystallizes in the

tetragonal In crystallography, the tetragonal crystal system is one of the 7 crystal systems. Tetragonal crystal lattices result from stretching a cubic lattice along one of its lattice vectors, so that the Cube (geometry), cube becomes a rectangular Pri ...

system. Its

Mohs scale The Mohs scale ( ) of mineral hardness is a qualitative ordinal scale, from 1 to 10, characterizing scratch resistance of minerals through the ability of harder material to scratch softer material. The scale was introduced in 1812 by the Ger ...

rating is 6.5 and a

specific gravity Relative density, also called specific gravity, is a dimensionless quantity defined as the ratio of the density (mass of a unit volume) of a substance to the density of a given reference material. Specific gravity for solids and liquids is nea ...

of 4.96. It has a metallic luster and its color is jet black, with light brown streaks.

References

Mindat.org – AbswurmbachiteWebmineral.com – AbswurmbachiteHandbook of Mineralogy – Abswurmbachite
Copper minerals Manganese minerals Nesosilicates Tetragonal minerals Minerals in space group 142 Minerals described in 1991 {{silicate-mineral-stub

See also

References