Mindat.org, the largest open database of minerals, rocks, and meteorites | Hacker News Reader

Mindat.org, the largest open database of minerals, rocks, and meteorites

mindat.org

186 pointscdepman19 comments

If you like information about minerals, you might find my visualisation of world production of different minerals also interesting:

https://ninhursag.herokuapp.com/

The green line shows world production form year 1900 to about 2020, depending on data availability. Yellowish green line shows available reserves – that is ‘easily’ available or economically feasible resources.

Most of USGS data series 140 minerals are included, and you can try to fit various Scipy distribution functions with the data to see some estimates.

PS. It’s on a free tier so it takes a few seconds to boot, if no one have visited recently.

Very cool, thanks! Just some quick feedback - I am colorblind (protan) and cannot distinguish among many of the graph lines or tell which part of the legend each corresponds with. This excellent article has some palette suggestions: https://davidmathlogic.com/colorblind/

Thank you for the kind feedback!

I made an issue, and will fix that and other accessibility concerns in the next release: https://github.com/peterhil/ninhursag/issues/10

I made a post about this on Mindat discussions: https://www.mindat.org/message.php?m=562336

Sorry couldn't resist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1yYJBzf1VQ

No kidding, was just thinking: Nice, probably Hank's homepage.

I have not clicked the link, but I am 100% certain I know what you've posted anyway. My thought exactly, too. Right after reading the headline.

It’s also awesome for finding abandoned mines, cool industrial sites, and interesting rock features if you like urban/rural exploration.

My friend who specializes in geochemistry and mineralogy does contribute to this site frequently - he uploaded over 1,5k photos of minerals samples

Also: https://www.gemdat.org/

Wow, it's even more comprehensive than the Dwarf Fortress wiki. https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Stone

These collaborative databases curated by people working in the field are usually gems.

This isn't technically a gem, it's a semi-precious website.

I always wonder what kind of data modeling is used in such websites.

OWL for data model and RDF for data would work well for it, though I don't know if that is what they use.

Compare for example:

- Atelestite on mindat: https://www.mindat.org/min-407.html

- atelestite on WikiData (RDF based): https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3627885

Is there a browseable catalogue of it available or is it all behind a search box. If the whole database was a physical book, someone who does not know anything about minerals could get a good overview of minerals, but if all this knowledge is gated behind a search box, then that functionality is lost.

https://www.mindat.org/directory.php there's a directory, but it's hidden behind the more option. Does seem like an important thing to hide away.

Edit:on clicking the links it looks like all the entries are just empty pages.

Can the database be exported somehow?

There is a thread on discussions about Mindsat API: https://www.mindat.org/mesg-450899.html#557085

They may have some funding on September to make a public API.

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