TauerRush vs KnowKi

TauerRush is a pocket mineralogy lab for anyone who sees chemistry in stones and beauty in formulas. With a clean dark interface, the app turns minerals, elements, crystal structures, and reactions into a clear and enjoyable learning experience. Explore a collection of 43 minerals across 9 families, from quartz and calcite to native gold, silver, and diamond. Each mineral has a detailed card with its chemical formula, Mohs hardness, crystal system, density, colors, formation conditions, practical uses, and surprising facts that make every sample feel more alive. The interactive periodic table includes all 118 chemical elements and helps connect each mineral to its real composition. Use pinch zoom, open individual element cards, and see how atoms become the building blocks of minerals found in nature. The Field Guide section offers 18 lessons on the basics of mineralogy, crystallography, and geochemistry, along with 12 step-by-step explanations of real scientific tasks. Learn how calcite reacts with hydrochloric acid, how pyrite oxidizes, how halite dissolves into ions, and how chemical equations can be balanced in a simple, understandable way. Quiz Lab helps test and strengthen your knowledge through 5 themed decks and 38 questions in different formats, including multiple choice, true or false, hardness ordering, formula matching, and reaction balancing. Best results are saved, so you can return, improve, and track your progress over time. TauerRush is designed for curious learners, mineral collectors, students, teachers, geology fans, and anyone who wants to better understand what our planet is made of. No ads, no subscriptions, and no internet required — just focused, well-organized knowledge about minerals, chemistry, and the hidden structure of the Earth. Open your own mineralogy lab and discover the science, patterns, and natural beauty inside every stone.

Get to know the living beings around you by name. KnowKi teaches you the species that people see regularly near a place you choose, with real photos, short practice, and a path that builds day by day. Botanist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer suggests ki (say "key") for any living being of the Earth, in place of "it": a bird, a tree, a snail is someone, not something. Together they are kin, in place of "them." KnowKi helps you get to know the more-than-human beings around you, until you can recognize kin in the wild with no key. Your guide is Āki, a kiwi from Aotearoa New Zealand whose name, in te reo Māori, means to encourage and urge on. A PATH OF SIX SPECIES AT A TIME Pick a place and a group: birds, mammals, plants, insects, arachnids, herps (reptiles and amphibians), fish, crustaceans, sea slugs, or other mollusks. Groups appear where they live, so sea slugs show up on the coast, not in the desert. Each unit introduces six species: meet them, match each one to a new photo, practice with ten photos and four choices, then pass a checkpoint to open the next six. REAL SIGHTINGS FROM REAL PLACES Lessons use research-grade iNaturalist observations recorded near your place, most commonly seen first. Native species lead the way; each chapter ends with an optional unit of introduced species, the ones people brought here. Protected species are included too, with their conservation status, and their locations always stay hidden. Every photo is credited to the naturalist who took it. PRACTICE THAT STICKS Missed species come back next time, and correct answers return over the following days. Recall cards ask you to type or say a name from the photo alone. A species becomes kin once you recognize it in two different photos on two different days. PLAY The Daily: five species a day, easy to hard, in three editions: your neighborhood, your country, and the world. Share your score without spoilers. Quirky Quizzes test what wild neighbors leave behind: eggs, nests, bones, tracks, feathers, and scat. YOUR FIELDBOOK Every species you've met, with a short introduction from Wikipedia, a map of where it's found, and your progress. Filter by group, favorites, introduced or protected species, and earn milestones along the way. TRIPS Learn the kin of any country, every U.S. national park, marine sanctuaries, or the most biodiverse places for life on Earth. GO MEET YOUR KIN Once you have 10 kin, KnowKi shows which are out and about near you this month, with a monthly Field Bingo card. Photograph what you find and share it on iNaturalist; connect your iNaturalist username to stamp each species you've found. Know a species well? Help identify other people's observations of it. A HOME-SCREEN WIDGET Your trail, today's goal, and your Daily score, with Āki under a sky that follows the time of day. PLAY WITH FRIENDS Sign in, turn on Friends, pick a nature name, and send your invite link. See each other's kin, trails, milestones, and Daily scores (a friend's score shows once you've played that Daily too). Species and places are never shared. YOURS, ON EVERY DEVICE No account needed. If you like, sign in with Apple to keep one Fieldbook on your iPhone and at knowki.app; KnowKi never asks for your name or email. No ads, no analytics SDKs, and no tracking. Optional soundscapes and gentle reminders. Lessons need an internet connection. Photos and observations come from iNaturalist contributors under Creative Commons licenses; species introductions are excerpts from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).