cinienia

Cinienia is a fictional mineral term used in geology education and in speculative fiction to illustrate mineral description and nomenclature. It is not an officially recognized mineral and has no standing in the International Mineralogical Association or other real-world mineral databases.

The name cinienia is a constructed term; it is widely used in problem sets and teaching examples to demonstrate how minerals are specified, classified, and described, rather than to report a real specimen. Its use helps students practice the conventions of mineral description, such as locality reporting, habit, cleavage, and associated minerals.

In common fictional depictions, cinienia is described as a silicate mineral that forms in medium- to high-grade metamorphic rocks under metasomatic conditions. It is typically described as opaque, with a vitreous to sub-metallic luster, a color range from dark gray to bluish green, and a Mohs hardness around 6. It is said to occur together with minerals such as quartz, plagioclase, and garnet, and to have a density in the range of about 3.4–3.7 g/cm3, though exact figures vary by author.

Because cinienia is not real, discussions of its properties serve primarily as a framework for teaching mineral description, including how to report locality, habit, cleavage, refractive properties, and associations. It is sometimes used in comparative exercises to illustrate the distinction between real minerals and fictional examples.