Cooperite is a grey mineral consisting of

platinum Platinum is a chemical element with the symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name originates from Spanish , a diminutive of "silver". Pla ...

sulfide (), generally in combinations with sulfides of other elements such as

palladium Palladium is a chemical element with the symbol Pd and atomic number 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself na ...

and

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with 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 slow ...

(PdS and NiS). Its general formula is . It is a dimorph of

braggite Braggite is a sulfide mineral of platinum, palladium and nickel with chemical formula: (Pt, Pd, Ni)S. It is a dense (specific gravity of 10), steel grey, opaque mineral which crystallizes in the tetragonal crystal system. It is the central member ...

. It is mined as an ore of platinum and

platinum group The platinum-group metals (abbreviated as the PGMs; alternatively, the platinoids, platinides, platidises, platinum group, platinum metals, platinum family or platinum-group elements (PGEs)) are six noble, precious metallic elements clustered t ...

metals such as palladium. It occurs in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

in minable quantities and an old mine near

Mount Washington Mount Washington is the highest peak in the Northeastern United States at and the most topographically prominent mountain east of the Mississippi River. The mountain is notorious for its erratic weather. On the afternoon of April 12, 1934 ...

Vancouver Island Vancouver Island is an island in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and part of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The island is in length, in width at its widest point, and in total area, while are of land. The island is the largest by ...

. It was first described in 1928 for occurrences in the

Bushveld Igneous Complex The Bushveld Igneous Complex (BIC) is the largest layered igneous intrusion within the Earth's crust. It has been tilted and eroded forming the outcrops around what appears to be the edge of a great geological basin: the Transvaal Basin. It i ...

and named after South African metallurgist Richard A. Cooper who first characterized it.Mindat mineral data
/ref>Handbook of Mineralogy
/ref>

References

Webmineral data
Platinum minerals Nickel minerals Palladium minerals Sulfide minerals Tetragonal minerals Minerals in space group 131 Minerals described in 1928 {{Sulfide-mineral-stub

See also

References