Melonite is a telluride of

nickel Nickel is a chemical element; it has symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive, but large pieces are slo ...

; it is a

metal A metal () is a material that, when polished or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, electricity and thermal conductivity, heat relatively well. These properties are all associated wit ...

lic

mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid substance with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. (2011): Mi ...

. Its chemical formula is NiTe₂. It is opaque and white to reddish-white in color,

oxidizing Redox ( , , reduction–oxidation or oxidation–reduction) is a type of chemical reaction in which the oxidation states of the reactants change. Oxidation is the loss of electrons or an increase in the oxidation state, while reduction is ...

in air to a brown tarnish. It was first described from the Melones and Stanislaus mine in

Calaveras County, California Calaveras County (), officially the County of Calaveras, is a county in both the Gold Country and High Sierra regions of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 45,292. The county seat is San Andreas. Angels ...

in 1866, by Frederick Augustus Genth. Melonite occurs as

trigonal In crystallography, the hexagonal crystal family is one of the six crystal family, crystal families, which includes two crystal systems (hexagonal and trigonal) and two lattice systems (hexagonal and rhombohedral). While commonly confused, the tr ...

crystals, which cleave in a (0001) direction. It has 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 7.72 and a

hardness In materials science, hardness (antonym: softness) is a measure of the resistance to plastic deformation, such as an indentation (over an area) or a scratch (linear), induced mechanically either by Pressing (metalworking), pressing or abrasion ...

of 1–1.5 (very soft).

References

* D. M. Chizhikov and V. P. Shchastlivyi, 1966, ''Tellurium and Tellurides'', Nauka Publishing,

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External links

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{{- Nickel minerals Telluride minerals Trigonal minerals Minerals in space group 164 Transition metal dichalcogenides Minerals described in 1866

See also

References

External links