Halite

Natural table salt. It forms thick beds where ancient seas dried up and grows as cubes, sometimes with stair-stepped 'hopper' faces.

Halite specimen — Photo: Lech Darski, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

How to identify halite

Tastes salty.
Breaks into cubes.
Dissolves in water.
Soft — a fingernail almost scratches it.

Often confused with

Calcite
Calcite has no taste, cleaves into slanted rhombs and fizzes in acid.
Compare side by side
Fluorite
Fluorite is harder, doesn't dissolve and cleaves into octahedrons.
Compare side by side

Where it's found

Wieliczka, Poland
Khewra, Pakistan
Detroit salt mine, Michigan

Uses

Table salt, road de-icing and chlorine production.

Rock tumbling

Not suitable for tumbling. It dissolves in water.

Did you know?

Pink 'Himalayan salt' is halite from the Khewra mine in Pakistan, far from the Himalayas.

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