Rocks and minerals

This is the area where German compounds pay for themselves fastest, because almost every term is a sentence folded into one word. Die Ritzhärte is the hardness you find by scratching; die Strichfarbe is the colour of the line a mineral leaves; die Lagerstätte is the place where a thing lies. Two words are worth separating early: das Mineral is a single substance with one composition, and das Gestein is what several of them make together, so granite is a Gestein and the quartz in it is a Mineral.