Silence Is Concurrence: October 2006

Saturday, October 28, 2006

My Minerals

These are some of the best specimens in my mineral collection.

This is Aqua Aura. It's not natural, but it is pretty. They created it by treating natural quartz crystals with gold in a vaccuum furnace.

An Apache Tear from Arizona.

Azurite

Bismith crystals. Although they do occur in nature, this one was 'grown' as a byproduct of some metal refining operation.

These two are calcite.

Carnelian, goldstone and citrine.

Dalmation stone.

These two above are a fluorite crystal, cut and polished. It looks awesome in the sunlight.

These two are also fluorite. The octahedral shape is not the way it grows, but how it cleaves. Cleavage is characteristic some minerals. It means that they tend to break along flat planes. If a meneral breaks irregularly, like a piece of hematite, then it has no cleavage is is said to fracture.

This is a piece of Jet. It's as lite as a feather and takes a high polish. Jet has been used to make carvings for pendands and broaches. Jet forms from bituminous coal. Since it is organic in origin, it is technically NOT a mineral, so it's called a 'mineraloid'. Pearl, ivory, amber, opal and coral are other mineraloids.

This is a piece of labradorite. Notice the bluish-greenish iridescence. This optical property has a specific name: labradorescence.

Pyrite, or "fool's gold", grows in several forms. This cube is about 3/4".

Rutilated quartz.

A smokey quartz crystal.

This is Ulexite, also called "TV stone". It has a property similar to fiber optics. It channels light from one side to the other. You can read through it as though the printing was on the top of the stone.

Lastly, my enhydro, or "water stone". It actually has water in it. You can hear is sloshing around if you shake it next to your ear, and you can see it if you shine a light through it. The water in this stone has been trapped inside for hundreds of millions of years.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

If you know me well...

... Then you know I LIKE ROCKS & MINERALS! I always have. They're just cool! Minerals are the best, with all their cool colors and cool crystal shapes (I know, I need to find another adjective). So, when I saw that the college was offering a course this fall on GEMSTONES, I was a bit...intrigued. It's a really cool - I mean neat course. I'm glad I signed up for it. AND, I'm glad I went to a local gem and mineral show this past weeked. I spent a few hours looking at lots of gems and minerals. It was really...fascinating (too Spock-ish?)! And cool! I even took PICTURES! Call me a geek if you must, I've heard it once or twice before...

Some of these came out a bit dingy. That's because I didn't use any flash. I might touch-up some of the worst ones, but on many you can't really even tell. It must have been a good day for light.

Amethyst

No shortage of quartz at the show. It comes in many pretty colors.

These two are natural copper. I'm not sure if this is how it formed or if lightening had something to do with it. Either way, it's pretty cool.

Fluorescence!

Fluorescence is one of THE coolest properties a mineral could have. Most minerals don't fluoresce, but those that do, DO!

These are, in my opinion, the best pictures from the show. There was a wooden light box setup with a UV (that's Ultraviolet for you rookies) light and these four minerals inside. I just wish they had a sign telling us what they were.

I had no idea if the pictures would come out ok, but figured it was worth a shot. I turned the flash off, set my camera for macro mode and snapped a few.

I wish I had also taken a few flash pictures of these. Fluorescence is odd in that the colors the minerals fluoresce are not necessarily anything like the mineral's colors in natural light. Diamonds, for example, fluoresce bluish, but rubies are still red.

Galena

No mineral show would be complete without a few geodes...

Look at the SIZE of that garnet!

Okay, it's not really a diamond diamond, it's a Herkimer diamond.

Mother Of Pearl (I think)

Pyrite is one of my favorite minerals. It grows in CUBES! It also grows in other shapes, but the cube is the coolest.

Did you know that the cubic crystal shape - also knows as isometric - is the most complex crystalline structures? It has more symmetry than you can imagine.