kivisen

Kivisen is a fictional mineral used in geoscience education and in speculative fiction. It was created to illustrate mineral classification, crystallography, and the interpretation of sample data. As a fictional construct, its properties are defined for teaching purposes and do not correspond to a discovered natural specimen.

The name is inspired by the Finnish word kivi, meaning stone, and was chosen for its stone-like character in classroom texts.

It is described as a monoclinic silicate with a vitreous luster, typically colorless to pale green, and with a Mohs hardness of 6.5. Its refractive indices are given as nα ≈ 1.62, nβ ≈ 1.68, nγ ≈ 1.70, and it shows moderate pleochroism in polarized light. The estimated specific gravity is about 3.2.

Chemical composition is presented as a simplified aluminous silicate with variable alkali and alkaline-earth content, reflecting common solid-solution toward magnesium-iron substitutions.

Within the fictional framework, kivisen forms through high-temperature metamorphism of ultramafic rocks or through hydrothermal alteration of existing silicates. It is said to occur in small, isolated nodules within imagined geologic provinces, often associated with minerals such as serpentinite, olivine, and pyroxene.

In education, kivisen serves as an example mineral for practice in hand-sample analysis, thin-section petrography, and data interpretation. In fiction, it can function as a plot device around mineral resources or ancient technology.

First introduced in teaching collections in the late 1990s by educators seeking a stable referent for mineral identification exercises.