A white or pale variety of the mineral albite (sodium feldspar) that forms in thin, leaf-like or platy crystals.
Named after the American geologist and mineralogist John Fales Lee, and later associated with the Cleveland area. The '-ite' suffix denotes a mineral name. This is a technical mineralogical term.
Cleavelandite gets its distinctive leaf-like appearance because albite naturally cleaves (splits) along flat planes in the crystal structure, creating those delicate, shimmery sheets you see in pegmatites—it's nature's way of following crystalline instructions.
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