What is the difference between a mineral and a rock? A rock is an aggregate or mix, of one or more minerals. Here are some fun facts about minerals to enjoy…

René Just Haüy

2022 was the bicentennial of the death of René Just Haüy (2/28/1743 – 6/3/1822). Not a name many of us know, but Haüy was a French mineralogist and is important because he is known as the Father of Modern Crystallography. He studied crystal structure, applied his theories to mineral classification and wrote several books including the Traité de Minéralogie.

To honor him and the importance of minerals in our world, the International Mineralogical Association named 2022 the Year of Mineralogy.

What are Mineralogy & Crystallography?

Mineralogy is the study of everything about minerals including their crystal structure, physical and chemical properties. Crystallography is the study of the structure and properties of crystals.

How Minerals Are Formed

Minerals are formed in four main ways:

• From Magma – Hot, molten lava cools and crystallizes to form minerals such as topaz.
• From Water – Chemicals in saturated water precipitate, or separate, into solids. An easy example is salt, halite, that’s left behind after ocean water evaporates.
• Alteration – As minerals react, slowly or quickly, with their environment they form different minerals. Cuprite forms when it’s exposed to oxygen.
• Metamorphism – Exposure to heat and pressure alters the chemistry of a mineral to become a different mineral such as rubies.

Glorious Gemstones

Gemstones used for jewelry can be considered at the top of the mineral world. They are rare, valuable, popular and prized for their mineral colors which can be quite vivid once they are cut and polished.

FYI – Not all gemstones come from minerals, for example, pearls and amber. Gems can be precious meaning they are the rarest and most valuable. There are only four precious gems; diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires. Gems that are also popular for jewelry but not as rare are called semiprecious…think amethyst, agate and turquoise.

The rating of precious or semiprecious was made long ago. Today, some semiprecious stones can be worth more than precious stones. Also, it doesn’t take into account scientific classifications of minerals. For example, emeralds are a type of beryl. Aquamarines are also a type of beryl.

Fabulous Diamonds

The word diamond comes from the Greek word adamas which means “invincible.” That’s certainly an accurate description given that diamonds have a Mohs hardness of ten!

According to National Geographic Kids Weird but True Rocks & Minerals, “On Earth’s surface, diamonds are rare. But go down around 100 miles below the surface and it’s a different story. Some scientists have estimated there may be more than a quadrillion tons of diamonds locked in rocks in Earth’s interior.”

This story about celebrating minerals appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Pam Freeman.

The post Celebrating Minerals first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

The rocks that animals consume are called gastroliths which literally translates to “stomach stones.” Gastroliths can be found in a range of animals including birds, reptiles, fish, insects, and even some mammals. Any type of stone can become a gastrolith; it just has to have been swallowed to join that club.

Why Do Animals Eat Rocks – Herbivores

What is an herbivore? It’s an animal that primarily eats plants. (Did you know that rocks and minerals play a role in plant growth?) So why do animals that eat rocks include herbivores? Though animals that eat stones are not all herbivores, those that are, have a special reason to consume rocks. Plant material is made up of cellulose. Cellulose is one of the most abundant, yet hard-to-digest materials found in plant material.

Cellulose is difficult to break down inside the body with only stomach acid. Why do animals eat rocks? Because stones inside an animal’s gizzard help to break this material down further before transferring it to a second stomach for additional digestion. This process smooths the stones over time. Many animals then regurgitate these smooth stones in favor of more jagged ones to help with the breaking down of food.

Why Birds Eat Rocks

Birds are the most common group of animals that eat rocks. These rocks aid in their digestion. Folks who raise birds are familiar with this as many supplement their feathered friends’ diets with grit, which are very small stones with uneven, blunt edges.

Birds don’t have teeth, or stomachs like mammals, instead, have a gizzard which is a muscular mass attached to their version of a stomach. The gizzard is where their food is ground up and mashed with the aid of the stones that they have swallowed.

Most avian consumers of stones are ground-dwelling or flightless birds. Chickens, turkeys, ostriches, and even penguins routinely swallow jagged little rocks while they are out and about foraging for food to help their digestion. Research has found that in ostriches, between one-fifth and one-half of their stomach contents are gastroliths.

These account for about one percent of the bird’s total body mass. It is speculated that the ratios and percentages are similar for other birds too (at least the ones that eat rocks).

There are some flying birds though that have been documented to be stone-eaters.

Crows and parrots are known to eat small rocks to aid their digestion. Some swimming and flying birds like ducks are also known to eat small grit-stones to help them break up their swallowed food. It is very likely that all birds swallow stones in some capacity to help break down their food.

Why Reptiles & Amphibians Eat Rocks

The need for birds to swallow rocks is pretty well understood. The same cannot be said though for reptiles. The prevailing theory for decades was that for swimming reptiles like crocodiles, swallowing rocks helped with their buoyancy. Given that they like to hover just below the water’s surface, this might be a plausible reason. A bellyful of rocks could help weigh themselves down enough so they don’t float all the way up to where they can be easily seen by their prey.

Much recent research about why do animals eat rocks, however, has suggested other hypotheses for this behavior in reptiles. Scientists have found that gastroliths make up less than two percent of the body mass of reptiles. They calculate that for the gastroliths to have the previously believed effect of achieving buoyancy, that number should be more than six percent of the animal’s body mass. The act of breathing, filling, and emptying their lungs with air, has more of an effect on buoyancy than the two percent of their body weight comprised of stones.

Current speculation about why do animals eat rocks is that the swallowed rocks help to stabilize the reptiles’ bodies in the water, reducing the tendency to roll from side to side. Though not reptiles, frogs eat rocks too.

Like birds though, the hypothesis is it helps them break up the insects they eat to get more nutrients from them. Earthworms are another animal that consumes rocks. Their internal digestive muscles, along with teethlike structures known as “grinders” break up plant material so that nutrients can be extracted from them.

Why Do Animals Eat Rocks – Sea Life

A variety of sea life eats rocks. Fish, clams, seals, and even whales are known to eat rocks, though in some cases it is believed to be inadvertent. Like crocodiles, it was once thought that sea lions, seals, walruses, and whales swallowed rocks to make diving easier.

Like other hypotheses that have arisen in recent years, the thinking for these sea creatures is that since many find their food on the ocean floor, they inadvertently scoop up rocks while scooping in on their food. This is seemingly more probable than swallowing rocks to help them dive.

The problem with the rocks as a diving aid hypothesis is that they would have to swallow huge rocks to make a difference. There is no evidence that they seek out and swallow big, heavy rocks.

Several species of bottom-feeding fish are also known to eat rocks, though again, it is not entirely known if this is intentional to aid in digestion, or accidental consumption while grabbing food off the seafloor. Other possibilities have arisen to explain this phenomenon in swimming mammals.

Alleviate Hunger

It is possible that some of these, and possibly other animals that eat rocks, do so to help alleviate hunger. Taking up space in their stomachs could potentially make them feel more full. Another conjecture is that they, like birds with their gizzards, swallow rocks to help their digestion (sans gizzard) and to break down the wide range of items that they may accidentally swallow.

One of the more unusual sea-dwelling rock eaters is a type of clam found in the Philippines, Lithoredo abatanica. The name roughly translates to “rock shipworm from the Abatan River.” Many would not recognize this animal as a clam.

It is fattened, worm-like, translucent, at least four inches (10 cm) long, with a shell complete with shovel-like projections. It is not akin in either appearance or bloodline to the familiar Quahog or Atlantic type of clam, but instead is a member of the shipworm family. These clams eat wood, but the newly discovered Lithoredo abatanica eats limestone, not wood. It burrows into rock and excretes sand. It is not yet known if these creatures actually derive any nutrition from these rocks.

The consumption of gastroliths by animals is a more common practice than most people would realize. Whether it be for digestion (with or without a gizzard), buoyancy, diving, deriving minerals, or feeling full, it is a widely practiced behavior in the wild animal kingdom. The next time you see a small, unassuming, round stone on the ground, it may well have been on quite a journey inside of any number of animals before finding itself at your feet.

This story about why do animals eat rocks previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Chris Bond.

The post Why Do Animals Eat Rocks? first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Whether teaming together for all-female outings, or introducing the world of rocks and minerals to the next generation, women bring a new perspective, and sometimes a different approach, to this age-old endeavor.

Following Her Calling

For some rockhounding women, their affinity for interesting finds started at an early age.

“Ever since I’ve been little, I spent time at Crystal Park, (a recreational area in southwestern Montana where natural crystals abound),” said Brianne Scott, founder of the informal group, Rockhounding Women Montana.

Even though rocks were in her DNA from an early age, Scott went another route, instead earning a degree in Elementary Education, but it wasn’t the right fit. “It’s tough to be in the classroom all day long,” she said. So she stepped away from the profession and started collecting more rocks, mostly for the fun of it.

During her excursions around her Butte home, she said, “ There’s one piece that I have that’s a really neat little piece.” She said she spotted it caked in dirt, but discovered it was a combination of feldspar, smoky quartz castle-like structures, and albite, all coated with epidote. “It’s my favorite because of the complexity of it. It’s so unique.”

“I found myself with an overabundance of rocks,” she said, “ That’s how I got introduced to the rockhounding groups in Montana.”

Finding Other Rockhounding Women

Scott also discovered other groups on social media. Being able to trade or buy specimens not found in her area is one benefit of these connections, along with the opportunity to learn from others’ experiences.

“The biggest thing I’ve noticed about rock people is they are so friendly. I really get that sense of community,” Scott noted. “That’s where the lady rockhounding group started. I’ve gone digging with a lot of boys, but wanted to find more women.”

“We did one field trip in the summer. A group of us gals went to Crystal Park and went digging for the day,” she said. Scott is already lining up field trips, as well as learning opportunities for any of the women who want to participate. “It’s knowing what to look for on your hikes.”

Scott loves hanging out with any rock enthusiast, but women’s groups are sometimes less intimidating to new rockhounds. “I noticed a lot of the men are very technical with things,” Scott explained, which isn’t always conducive to a newbie. She believes women have a broader view of the landscape and notice what’s going on around, or in, the ground.

“Really it’s still a good partnership with men and women. It’s just a different dynamic,” she said.

When it comes to women, or really anyone, who wants to step into this fascinating world, Scott’s best advice is, “Reach out to folks. You’ll be able to find someone who is more than willing.”

Teaching the New Generation

While some rockhounding women are born with rocks in their pockets, others grow into it. Becky Weldy, a high school science teacher in Covington, Ohio, said her interest began during her post-graduate work. At that time, Wright State University offered a Master’s Degree program to educate teachers in geology.

“The professor opened my eyes to it,” Weldy said, particularly because the courses were far from mere academic musing with field trips in the Ozarks, Finger Lakes of New York, as well as the east coast of New Jersey.

Now she offers college-level courses in a high school class, enlightening the students to see beyond the textbooks. “I think a lot of the kids don’t seem to travel as much,” noted Weldy who aims to inspire them and bring the outdoors inside through her curriculum.

Field Trips & School

Weldy plans several field trips throughout the academic year, including visiting the Ohio Caverns, which are geological wonders in and of themselves, as well as Caesars Creek State Park in Waynesville. She said the area was developed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1938 as flood control. The dam formed Caesar Creek Lake, which at 115 feet deep is the deepest in Ohio, and the spillway is rich in fossils such as trilobites and horn corals. This whole area is known throughout the world as a hotspot for geologists. A permit is required, but she turns the day into a multi-course study for her students.

Weldy also strives to bring her geology studies to the school. ”My other big project is behind our football field in eight acres of woods,” she said. Several years ago, teachers began working to turn the area into a working land lab cutting through new trails, spraying out the invasive honeysuckle, and replanting native trees.

Of course, the elementary kids already love exploring the space, plus Weldy incorporates the natural area into her geology classes with her 11th and 12th graders where they’re able to conduct real-world tests.

“It brings it into perspective to see and to touch,” she said. ”It is eye-opening to a lot of them.”

She hopes that even though she didn’t experience the wonders of geology until later in life, her students will have a jump on an appreciation of the rocks and minerals.

Rocks in Her Pockets

Dr. Kerry Griffis-Kyle, Ph.D., is an associate professor teaching classes involving complex ecosystems at Texas Tech University. Throughout her career, Griffis-Kyle primarily focuses on living things, but rocks are what make her happy.

She laughed when remembering her move from Syracuse to the Southwest when the movers picked up a particularly heavy box and wondered what could be in it. It read: “Rocks and Dead Things.”

Griffis-Kyle said, “That’s what it was because I am a biologist!”

The landscape at her home in Lubbock, Texas, is extraordinarily flat so for years she brought home larger specimens to add visual interest. Now that she is delving into the art of rock tumbling, she has shifted her focus.

“With the rock tumbling I’m picking up smaller rocks,” Griffis-Kyle noted. This focus on tumbling also requires a different form of attention. She’s learned to use a flashlight and black light to inspect the stones for structures within them. But she added, “I need to be better at identifying them. Some rocks are toxic. Some have mercury or uranium in them.” She pointed out that rocks with bright yellows and greens are particularly important to identify and handle properly.

Social Media Connections

In this new endeavor, she said that social media connections, especially with rockhounding women, are invaluable, whether it’s choosing the best rocks or specifics on using the tumbler. It’s a combination of art and science where a strong streak of experience goes a long way.

“I’m paying attention more to where the resources are,” Griffis-Kyle noted. When choosing where to camp, rockhounding is at the top of the activity list, and she enjoys visiting New Mexico. She said the state does an excellent job explaining where you can find different rocks and where it’s permissible to keep them.

She pointed out, “State by state you have to pay attention to what is allowed. Most of the time it’s okay to pick up a few rocks for personal use on federal land, but you can’t pick up fossils and artifacts. And never pick up anything on Park Service or DOD (Department of Defense) land.”

Always a scientist at heart, Griffis-Kyle appreciates the geological processes it requires to create colorful and unique specimens, but in the end, she said she looks for rocks because they make her happy. ”It’s kind of like art appreciation. Different things speak to different people.”

Gaining Knowledge in Groups

Although Valerie Steichen brought home rocks throughout her life, it wasn’t until she attended a rock and gem show in Missoula, Montana, that she noticed the long list of field trips hosted by the Hellgate Mineral Society. She was immediately on board.

“ They’re looking for young members,” said Steichen, noting the reality is many people within the group are over 70 years old, a common trend of these types of groups. There are lifetimes of knowledge waiting to be shared with the next generations, which is one of the main reasons Steichen appreciates the group.

“The main reason I go is so I get to walk in the forest with a geologist and learn,” she said. And besides the fieldwork, the club offers numerous educational workshops to keep everyone sharp.

Joining the Men

Whether it’s potentially the older membership and generational differences or an intimidation factor for women who are new to rockhounding, Steichen noted that when they go on field trips, the group is roughly 90 percent men.

But she is quick to allay concerns and encourages rockhounding women, and younger people in general, to join a local mineral or gem hunting group. “All of them are friendly,” she said.

Besides the innate knowledge of the landscape and the minerals found within it, Steichen noted, “What really struck me is their responsibility for nature.” She appreciates the knowledge of how to ethically dig for minerals, which is a growing concern in some regions when, at times, visitors take too much or do not practice Leave No Trace principles. By digging with one of these well-educated groups, new enthusiasts learn how to protect the resources for everyone.

For Steichen, one of her favorite finds is agates, which is the state rock for Montana. “I think I can pick out agate at a mile away. They look like ugly rocks, but they have billions of years of a story to tell,” she said.

And while the finds are beautiful, there are stories behind each one. Steichen said, “I remember where I found the rocks. There are memories to it and it means something.” So whether she is rock hunting with the Mineral Society members or looking for agates with her family, Steichen is the mineral matriarch who passes on this knowledge to anyone who wants to learn.

This story about rockhounding women previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Amy Grisak.

The post Rockhounding Women first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

At an early age, John became curious about his uncle’s line of work, but his queries were often met with vague responses. As an adult, he devoted much time and effort to researching his uncle’s history.

The following is John’s perspective of that history, a few stories of the everyday life of the scientists, plus a quick rundown of naturally occurring radiation, including radioactive rocks, present in our lives today.

Philip Grant Koontz

Uncle Grant met his wife, Florence Eyre while both were undergraduate students at Hastings College in Nebraska where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1927. He earned a master’s degree from the University of Nebraska before earning his doctorate in physics from Yale.

After graduating, Grant served as an associate professor of physics at Colorado State University. Here is where the history becomes clouded in secrecy. Sometime during Grant’s tenure at Colorado State, he met and assisted Arthur H. Compton on Mt. Evans in his studies of cosmic rays.

In 1942, Grant was asked by Compton to join Enrico Fermi and the other scientists in Chicago at the “Metallurgical Lab,” for the creation of the Chicago Pile (CP-1). Shortly after the Chicago scientists achieved a sustained nuclear reaction, Grant and his family were spirited off to Los Alamos, New Mexico. Now the secrecy was stepped up.

Science, Secrecy & Real People

While both in Chicago and Los Alamos, the scientists worked feverishly on what is now called The Manhattan Project. But as history and several photos handed down through the Eyre family prove, those scientists were real people with families and interests outside of their laboratories. While still in Chicago, Uncle Grant and Aunt Florence hosted a picnic at their home. Family photos show that Enrico Fermi, his wife and young daughter, and a few unidentified scientists attended.

Once at Los Alamos, Grant took photos of several of the scientists collecting selenite in an area outside of the compound. Rockhounding must run in the family! But everyday life was hard for both the scientists and their families. All mail to friends and relatives was sent via a post office box in New York City and was carefully censored to remove any reference as to where they were, what they were doing or even anything about the weather. Grant could never tell his wife where he was going when he disappeared for days while testing bombs at Trinity Site or the Nevada Test Site.

Once some of the secrecy was lifted, Grant liked to tell a story about how he and a few of his fellow scientists discovered a hole in the Los Alamos compound fence. For fun, instead of simply telling the authorities about the security breach, a few scientists took their family dogs for a walk outside the compound. They signed out at the gate, proceeded to the hole in the fence; crawled under the fence and proceeded to sign out at the gate a second and third time before the guard caught on and they finally told him about the hole.

An Atomic Timeline

It’s time to tell the real history of these men. An easy way to do that is by using a timeline of their achievements.

The culmination of all of this work was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which effectively ended WWII. Our world was forever changed and the discoveries of these scientists are still present in our day-to-day lives.

Rockhounding

Radioactivity didn’t just appear in our lives with these discoveries, it was always naturally occurring in our rocks and minerals. The most common radioactive minerals found in nature are uranite, thorite, pitchblende and carnotite.

One of the byproducts of atomic bomb testing is “trinitite.” Scientists gave this name to the desert sand which fused into glass caused by the heat of the first atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945, at the Trinity Test Site, outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico. Uncle Grant sent several samples to John’s dad, a chemist who cast them into paperweights made of Lucite plastic.

Radioactive Food, Medicine & Household Items

Probably the most common food containing a radioactive isotope (K-40) of potassium is bananas. Not to worry, you would need to eat 70,000 bananas to get the equivalent radiation of a chest CT scan. Small amounts are also found in potatoes, kidney beans, sunflower seeds or any food containing potassium.

On the other hand, Brazil nuts contain small amounts of radium isotopes approximately 1,000 times higher than those found in other foods. Some salt substitutes contain small amounts of radioactive potassium (K-40).

Many generic brands of antidiarrhea medication contain kaolin clay that has elevated levels of uranium and thorium.

Still, no worries, as you would have to consume over 1,000 pounds a year to exceed the current EPA maximum exposure level. The name brand of this drug has discontinued use of kaolin clay.

Ionization-type smoke detectors contain small quantities of americium-241. Never try to disassemble one of these units.

Kitty litter contains bentonite clay which is measurably radioactive. The contents include uranium, thorium and potassium-40. Also, potassium chloride water softener salt contains measurable amounts of potassium-40. A standard 50-lb. bag would never make it past the highly sensitive radiation monitors used at nuclear power plants.

Radioactive Collectibles

Uranium Glass

Early civilizations used minerals to add color to their glass and pottery. Uranium, or Vaseline glass as it is sometimes called, was not known to be radioactive until 1896. However, some earlier glassware contained radioactive colorants for over 2,000 years. It is usually yellow to green and is fluorescent under UV light. It contains two to 25% uranium oxide and is slightly radioactive.

Uranium glass is collectible and was made into various items from everyday glassware to bowls, knick-knacks and souvenir items. The bowl this author’s grandmother used to make gelatin in every week as well as her special occasion stemware is still a part of our family’s collection.

Orange Fiesta Tableware

Uranium oxide has been added to ceramic glazes for many years to color pieces orange-red. The Homer Laughlin Company used it to produce their bright orange Fiesta tableware from 1936 to 1943. Its use ended in 1943 when the company’s supply of uranium oxide was commandeered by the U.S. government for use in atomic weapon production. To this day, all of these original pieces are fairly radioactive and should NOT be used for food purposes, but only as radioactive collectibles.

Lantern Mantles, Metal Alloys & Welding Rods

Non-nuclear uses of thorium compounds are limited. Thorium oxide is the coating used on gas lantern mantles in older camping lanterns. It’s what causes the lanterns to incandesce at high temperatures. Several types of nickel alloys have thorium oxide added to them to increase their strength.

Thorium oxide is also used as an additive to some tungsten-based welding rods. TIG welding rods are available with a 2% thorium content to help in arc stabilization and are slightly radioactive.

3M Model C-15 Tape Dispensers

Next time you wrap a present, take note of your tape dispenser. If it is old and exceptionally heavy, it may be one of the 3M company dispensers made in the 1970s. These models were filled with monazite sand for ballast. Monazite is a radioactive mineral containing thorium.

More Items

There are more radioactive collectibles than can be listed in detail, but here are just a few more:

• Firestone Brand Polonium Spark Plugs from 1946 to 1953—contain polonium

• Radium watch and clock hands—contain radium

• Glow-in-the-dark gun sights—contain tritium

• Military ballistic projectile penetrators— contain depleted uranium

• Cloisonne jewelry with orange or yellow glaze—contains uranium oxide

• Radio Brand Golf Balls 1910 to 1930— contain radium

• Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab Kit, sold in 1951-1952 as a child’s educational tool, was deemed to be dangerous and taken off the market. They are still available on the internet for upwards of $2,000 to $4,000—contain samples of autunite, carnotite, torbernite & uranite

Plan a Visit

Hands-on learning opportunities about the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Age are available with planned visits to various sites across the U.S. The National Park Service sponsors sites at Los Alamos, Hanford and Oak Ridge. You may want to visit the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos. Special tours of Trinity Site and the Nevada Test Site are available on a limited basis and may require registration and possible security clearance.

Radioactivity has been and always will be present in our world. To the rockhound, if handled and stored properly, radioactive minerals and collectibles can provide an interesting addition to mineral collections.

This story about radioactivity previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Sue Eyre.

The post Radioactivity, Rocks & The Men Who Handled Them first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Minerals are all around us and even within us. Consider iron in your blood or calcium in your bones. While humans have always sought food products, we’ve always used rocks. Our ancestors used cobbles as hammers to crack nuts. We later learned to use obsidian, chert, and flint to knap knives and spear points and to spark fire. We’ve moved on from the Stone Age to the Copper, Bronze, and Iron Ages. Minerals and related earth resources continue to enable contemporary life and the built environment in which we live. They include metals, nonmetallic minerals, and fossil fuels. How little we appreciate this fact of life!

Take the Common Pencil…

Something as simple as a pencil requires more minerals than you might imagine. While a pencil casing is painted wood with a hollow core, the rod within the core is a combination of graphite (carbon) and kaolinite (clay). The more kaolinite, the harder the rod. This is why we have #2, #3, and other pencil grades that leave either a wide dark streak or a slender light streak. While the pencil eraser is a natural or synthetic rubber, it may contain pumice to provide grit. Holding that eraser to the pencil is a tube constructed of aluminum (from bauxite) or brass (from copper plus zinc, or sphalerite). Four to six minerals in a common pencil. Who knew?!

To appreciate the number of minerals used in everyday life, deconstruct other objects. A salt shaker often has an aluminum top (derived from bauxite) and a glass body (from sand, or silicon dioxide) and is filled with salt (halite) crystals. Although it’s on its way out, an old-fashioned incandescent light bulb has a glass exterior (made from silica, soda ash, lime, coal, and salt), a brass or aluminum screw-in base, a tungsten filament, copper and nickel lead-in wires, molybdenum tie and support wires, and an aluminum heat deflector.

Explore Minerals Contributing to the Build Environment

Here are some fun and easy exercises to introduce kids (and yourself ) to the many minerals contributing to our built environment.

Match the Product to the Mineral

An Interactive Display & Quiz

Perfect for a school project…Construct an interactive display showing everyday items at the back and the minerals that went into them at the front. For instance, a soda can at the back and a specimen of bauxite (aluminum ore) at the front, or matches at the back and sulfur at the front. Provide a quiz for kids to fill out to match a mineral to a product.

Spin the Wheel!

For more immediate interactive fun, have a board laid out with squares numbered and stocked with different economic minerals. Kids spin the wheel. They then need to name a product made from a mineral on the number where the wheel lands. If they guess correctly, they keep the mineral. Stick with fairly easy and obvious choices (e.g., a copper nugget matched to plumbing pipes) and have a poster or chart nearby that kids can consult.

The Home Scavenger Hunt

In a school classroom, rock club meeting room, or a home, gather kids around a flipchart, chalkboard, or whiteboard. Encourage them to look around and list everyday things and the rocks and minerals that went into them. If using an old-fashioned chalkboard, you can start with the chalk and the slate of the chalkboard. You might go throughout an entire house, or focus on a particular room.

Here are just a few examples: a brass lamp, windows made of silica, many things made of plastic derived from petrochemicals, fireplace bricks derived from clay (kaolinite), a tin cup, a gold wedding ring, walls made of plasterboard comprised of gypsum, steel nails, and screws in the furniture and paint on the walls containing diatomite as filler.

A Hardware Store Scavenger Hunt

Take a field trip for a scavenger hunt at a hardware store. To get started, here are a few things to seek:

• aluminum and tin siding or roofing (from bauxite or cassiterite)

• bricks and ceramic products (from fired clay, or kaolinite)

• diatomaceous earth for swimming pool filters

• drill bits and saw blades used for cutting tile, concrete, etc. (from diamond)

• electrical wiring, pipes, and plumbing fixtures (from copper)

• glass (from silica sand)

• plaster and drywall (from gypsum)

• rough and crushed rocks and stones for ornamental use (scoria, limestone, marble, etc.)

• sand for mixing with concrete, for sandboxes, etc.

• slabs of various sorts (granite, marble, etc.) for kitchen countertops

• steel and iron nails (made from iron ores like hematite)

Make Your Own Collection

Entire collections can be made of the raw materials of our built environment. Many common minerals are inexpensive and readily available from show dealers. As a start, consider pennies and a copper nugget; nails and hematite; fluorinated toothpaste and a fluorite crystal; laundry detergent and borate minerals; table salt and halite crystals; matches and sulfur.

Learn More!

Several websites provide handy tables linking minerals to everyday objects. Here’s a sampling:

• Minerals Education Coalition

• Women in Mining

• United States Geological Survey (USGS)

• American Geosciences Institute (AGI)

• Gemological Institute of America (GIA)

• National Mining Association

• AFMS Future Rockhounds of America Badge Manual

How Minerals Shape History

As we humans progressed from the Stone Age to the Electronic Age, we’ve seen all sorts of ages in between dominated by a search for earth resources. Consider gold rushes, wars of conquest for mineral-rich colonies, and “titans of industry” (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Peabody, Getty). Our current age is obsessed in a quest for minerals for electric batteries built with lithium, and cobalt. These resources are eagerly being sought to move us from a carbon-emitting petroleum-dependent economy to one based on clean energy.

However, keep in mind that clean electric energy still requires dirty mining. If you think we can get to a so-called no-cost energy future, think again! There will always be a need for mining and minerals, along with a cost to pay. How we ultimately balance such costs is what matters. Think we can live without minerals and all that goes into extracting them? Think again. Think wisely.

What Made It?

Pencils or smartphones are just the beginning. There are thousands of minerals and even more applications of those minerals. Here’s a tiny selected sampling…

This story about the minerals used in everyday life previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Jim Brace-Thompson.

The post Minerals Used in Everyday Life first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

This stone, paradoxically celebrated for its beauty yet feared for its curse, is the Hope Diamond. The size of a walnut and a deep blue gem in color, it is the world’s best-known diamond. Over its 370-year-long, often murky history, it has become immersed in legend, stolen at least twice and cut four times. Its owners have included sultans, kings, bankers, jewelers, thieves, a popular stage performer, and a fabulously wealthy heiress.

Since 1958, the Hope Diamond has been a major attraction at the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution) in Washington D.C., where it has been viewed by more than 100 million visitors and is currently valued at over $250 million.

Plucked From the Eye of an Idol

The Hope Diamond’s strange story began in 1653 when French gem merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier visited India’s Golconda Sultanate. There he purchased a crudely cut, triangular, flat, blue diamond of extraordinary size—115 carats. According to legend, this diamond, now known as the “Tavernier Diamond,” had been cursed since it previously had been plucked from the eye of a statue of a Hindu idol.

After returning to Europe in 1668, Tavernier sold the diamond to King Louis XIV of France, who ordered the stone recut. Tavernier wrote extensively about the gem before his death in Moscow the following year—when he was reportedly dismembered by a pack of wild dogs.

The “French Blue” and the Guillotine

The 1691 French crown jewel inventory describes the recut stone as “a very big, violet (the period term for “blue”) diamond, thick, cut with facets on both sides and in the shape of a heart with eight main faces.” It weighed 67.1 carats and was valued at the equivalent of $4 million in 2023 dollars. Formally known as the Blue Diamond of the Crown of France and popularly as the “French Blue,” this smaller stone, with its enhanced symmetry and additional pavilion facets, was substantially more brilliant than the original Tavernier Diamond. The French Blue was likely the first large diamond to be cut in a modern brilliant style.

Louis XIV had the blue diamond, along with a 117-carat red spinel and 195 smaller diamonds, set in an elaborate pendant that symbolized the Order of the Golden Fleece, a Catholic order of chivalry. Despite this prestigious setting, the idea that the French Blue was cursed gained credibility with the misfortunes of Louis XIV. Five of his legitimate children died in infancy. And the king himself died in agony of gangrene in 1715.

Setting the Stage

Ownership of the French Blue then passed to Louis XV, a monarch who enjoyed great popularity early in his reign—but his good fortune did not last. He engaged in costly wars that drained the French treasury, weakened royal authority, and set the stage for the French Revolution. Louis XV died a hated man in 1774.

The French Blue then became the property of King Louis XVI and his wife, the infamous Marie Antoinette, both of whom often wore the stone. But when the French Revolution erupted in 1789, the monarchy fell and, in September 1792, Louis was beheaded in a public execution. Marie Antoinette also died at the guillotine four months later.

A Convoluted Trail

During the French Revolution, the blue diamond, now widely believed to be cursed, was stolen from a royal warehouse and never seen again, at least not as the French Blue. The history of the stone then became uncertain. In 1812, just as the statute of limitations regarding the theft took effect, a 45-carat blue diamond appeared in the hands of London diamond merchant Daniel Eliason. Amid widespread accusations that this diamond was actually a cut-down version of the stolen French Blue, Eliason committed suicide.

In 1820, Britain’s King George IV acquired the diamond. Following his death in 1830, his bankrupt estate sold the stone to pay off debts. Attention then shifted to London banking heir Henry Philip Hope, who some suspected had secretly bought the diamond from French thieves in the early 1800s. Hope publicly listed the stone in his 1839 gem catalog—only to die just months later.

The Hope Diamond

The blue diamond remained with the Hope family for the next 57 years, the last owner being the American actress, playwright, and concert-hall singer May Yohé (Mary Augusta Yohé, Lady Francis Hope), whose writings and stage productions often called attention to the stone’s purported curse. The diamond was sold in 1896 to settle Yohé’s pressing debts. Many believed that the celebrated singer herself fell victim to the stone’s evil power: After enduring two disastrous marriages, she died in poverty in 1938.

The blue diamond, now known as the “Hope Diamond,” next passed through the hands of several gem merchants and jewelers, and two Ottoman sultans. The stone was then acquired by the prestigious Paris jewelry firm Cartier and director Pierre Cartier, a renowned wheeler-dealer in the gem world, who immediately began seeking a buyer and a quick profit.

On to America

The story of how the Hope Diamond came to the United States began in 1896 in the gold-mining camp of Ouray, Colorado, where prospector Thomas F. Walsh bought two abandoned claims for back taxes. This purchase turned out to be one of history’s greatest bargains, for the original claim owners had somehow overlooked a massive deposit of phenomenally rich gold ore.

In 1898, Walsh’s daughter Evalyn married Edward “Ned” Beale McLean, heir to The Washington Post newspaper fortune, and became an internationally known socialite with lavish tastes, especially for fine gems. When Thomas Walsh died in 1910, he left his fortune of $3 million ($90 million in 2023 dollars) to his 24-year-old daughter Evalyn Walsh McLean.

Pierre Cartier

Having previously sold fine gems to Evalyn, Pierre Cartier knew that the heiress, now in receipt of her fortune, was a prime candidate to buy the Hope Diamond. Pierre’s first attempt to sell her the stone failed. But he tried again, this time with the diamond set in a striking modern mount surrounded by a three-tiered circlet of dozens of smaller white diamonds.

Also astutely guessing that Evalyn would be fascinated by the stone’s purported curse, Pierre recounted—and likely embellished— its more disturbing details. In 1911, amid great publicity, Evalyn bought the Hope Diamond for $300,000 ($9 million in 2023 dollars). Enamored of the stone, the heiress frequently wore it at balls and parties, at times hanging it around the neck of her Great Dane or hiding it in the furniture and challenging her guests to “find the Hope.”

But in the end, Evalyn also seems to have paid dearly for owning the Hope Diamond: Her husband died in a mental hospital, her firstborn son was fatally struck by an automobile at age nine, and her 24-year-old daughter died of an overdose of sleeping pills.

Harry Winston & The Smithsonian

In 1947, New York City diamond merchant Harry Winston purchased the Hope Diamond from Evalyn Walsh McLean’s estate.

For nearly a decade, Winston displayed the stone on his popular “Court of Jewels” tour across North America, showing it at charity balls and on television shows. He ordered a minor recutting of the stone’s pavilion facets to further increase its brilliance—the fourth and last time that the Hope would be cut.

In the mid-1950s, mineralogist George Switzer, an associate curator at the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian), proposed establishing a national gem collection with the Hope Diamond as the centerpiece. Switzer asked Harry Winston to donate the stone to the Smithsonian. In 1958, Winston, intrigued by the idea of a national gem collection and perhaps even more so by a monumental tax write-off, agreed.

Winston sent the Hope Diamond from New York City to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., by registered, insured first-class mail. And what happened next convinced many that the Hope’s curse was still alive. Shortly after hand-delivering the stone, United States Post Office letter carrier James Todd was seriously injured in two back-to-back automobile accidents—before losing his house to a fire.

New Look at an Old Stone

For centuries, no conclusive proof existed that the Hope Diamond had been cut from the French Blue, or that the latter had been cut from the Tavernier Diamond. But in 2007, a Paris museum curator discovered a lead cast of the French Blue from which researchers prepared a three-dimensional, digital image. Comparisons with images of the Hope Diamond proved that the Hope had indeed been cut from the French Blue.

Researchers then computer-imaged the Tavernier Diamond based on Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s detailed drawings from the late 1660s. Image comparisons confirmed that both the Hope Diamond and the French Blue had once been the Tavernier Diamond

A museum cataloging label also indicated that the lead cast of the French Blue dated to 1812 when the stone’s owner was a “Mr. Hoppe of London,” strongly suggesting that Henry Philip Hope had acquired the diamond not long after its theft during the French Revolution, then recut it to disguise its identity to avoid a French repossession lawsuit. After apparently passing the diamond on to Daniel Eliason, Hope seems to have reacquired the stone 25 years later shortly before his death.

“Proof” of the Curse?

Researchers have also learned that the Hope Diamond, when exposed to shortwave ultraviolet light, glows like a burning red ember. While many blue diamonds exhibit this same fluorescence, none match the Hope’s fiery intensity. Gemologists attribute this unusual fluorescence to traces of boron that also produce the Hope’s distinctive blue color. This boron interacts with other trace impurities, enabling electrons within the stone’s crystal lattice to absorb energy from ultraviolet light, and then release it as visible red light.

While gemologists agree that this fluorescence adds to Hope’s uniqueness, intrigue, and mystery, others attribute its eerie red glow to a demonic presence.

Despite the dark legends that still surround the Hope, this celebrated blue diamond has certainly not cursed the Smithsonian, which has benefited enormously through worldwide attention along with substantially increased gifting and visitor attendance.

This story about the Hope Diamond curse previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Steve Voynick.

The post The Hope Diamond Curse first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Black diamond refers to both carbonado diamonds and black gem diamonds, they are not a diamond alternative and they are not synthetic diamonds. Carbonado, a rare type of diamond with a polycrystalline structure, is not normally considered a gemstone. Nevertheless, super large diamonds like large, faceted carbonados sell for several million dollars. Black gem diamonds, on the other hand, are a color variety of monocrystalline, or “single-crystal,” diamonds—the familiar stones we see in jewelry stores.

Carbonado Black Diamonds

In 1843, Brazilian placer miners discovered dense, opaque, black pebbles and cobbles that they named “carbonado,” after the Portuguese carbonizado, meaning “carbonized” or “burned” and alluding to their charred appearance. Mineralogists subsequently described carbonado as a previously unknown form of diamond with a polycrystalline structure and consisting of tightly bonded aggregates of randomly arranged diamond microcrystals.

Carbonado had no value until the 1870 introduction of diamond-studded drill bits. With its greater hardness and durability, along with a microcrystalline structure that provided more cutting edges, carbonado’s rock-cutting ability far exceeded that of a monocrystalline diamond.

Industrial demand for carbonado soared and, by 1880, Brazil was mining 70,000 carats (30.9 pounds) per year and selling it to the United States and Europe for $20 per carat. Carbonado-studded drill bits were later used extensively in building the Panama Canal and developing Minnesota’s great open-pit iron mines. Carbonado has now been replaced by synthetic polycrystalline diamond and is no longer mined commercially

The Great Carbonados

Carbonado diamonds are quite rare. Only an estimated three tons have been mined in the past 150 years—almost nothing compared with the 25 tons of monocrystalline diamonds now mined worldwide each year. Despite its scarcity, carbonado has provided many extraordinary specimens.

In 1895, Brazilian placer miner Sérgio Borges de Carvalho recovered a huge carbonado of 3,167 carats (22.34 ounces). Weighing 61 carats more than South Africa’s fabled Cullinan Diamond (monocrystalline), it was the largest diamond of any kind ever found. The “Sérgio Diamond,” named in de Carvalho’s honor, sold for $16,000 ($500,000 in 2023 dollars). Unfortunately, it was broken up into cutting studs for drill bits.

Of the few gems ever cut from Carbonado, the most spectacular is the Enigma Diamond. The world’s largest faceted diamond, the Enigma sold in 2022 in a highly publicized auction for $4.3 million. The preponderance of “fives” in this irregularly cut, 55-facet, 555.55-carat gem is not coincidental: Its previous owner, an Arab tycoon, styled its cut after the ancient Mideastern hamsa amulet, which both Jewish and Arabic traditions associate with the number five.

The Origin of Carbonado

Scientists initially assumed that both polycrystalline and monocrystalline diamonds formed in the extreme heat and pressure of the Earth’s mantle and were later emplaced in surface kimberlite pipes. But carbonado does not occur in association with monocrystalline diamonds.

By the 1970s, researchers had concluded that carbonado’s unusual inclusions indicated not mantle formation, but rather meteoric origin. They also noted that because carbonado in quantity was found only in Bahia, Brazil, and the Ubangi River region of the Central African Republic—and in the same geologic horizons—it had likely fallen to Earth in a single, massive meteoric event when South America and Africa were joined as one landmass.

Many scientists now believe that carbonado formed on exploding red giants (large stars with low surface temperatures) when shock waves compressed carbon into polycrystalline diamonds before hurling it into space where some eventually reached Earth as meteorites.

Black Diamonds

Meanwhile, as scientists continued to debate the origin of carbonado, black monocrystalline diamonds were gaining popularity as faceted gems. Their black color and opacity are caused by numerous tiny inclusions, most often of graphite or amorphous carbon.

Only about 1 in 10,000 monocrystalline diamonds is naturally black. Historically, these stones had no gem value until the 1990s when they began appearing in white gold and platinum settings accompanied by colorless melee diamonds. These black monocrystalline diamonds also began attracting metaphysical interest as stones that provide wearers with power, determination, and inner strength.

Natural vs. Treated

Faceted, natural, black monocrystalline diamonds now sell for about $2,500 per carat. But most black-diamond gems currently being sold started as heavily included, grayish, industrial-grade diamonds. Heating these low-value stones to 1300°C for several hours converts tiny inclusions of amorphous carbon to graphite which absorbs white light and produces nearly opaque, very dark green stones that appear black. Today, loose, heat-treated, faceted black diamonds sell for roughly $300 per carat.

The most celebrated natural, black, monocrystalline diamond gem is the 67.5-carat Black Orlov Diamond. Mined as a 195-carat rough crystal, it was believed to be cursed after three of its owners committed suicide. To break the curse, the gem was cut into three pieces, the largest being the Black Orlov. Mounted in a brooch and surrounded by a circle of 108 small, colorless diamonds, the Black Orlov has been displayed at major museums around the world.

So, whether as polycrystalline carbonado or monocrystalline gems, black diamonds are finally gaining the respect they deserve.

This story about black diamonds previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Steve Voynick.

The post Black Diamonds Gain Respect first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

“Under the rocks and stones, there is water underground.” ~ Talking Heads

The answer lies in (among other places) the lyrics of the 1970’s art rock band, Talking Heads: Water.

Rock Tumbling Blow Up

Rock tumbling began millions of years ago, as waves and streams tumbled Earth’s first sediments. Over time, the more ingenious of our ancestors discerned how such natural processes shaped and smoothed some rocks more than others. Moving water became the first “rock tumbler.”  

For thousands of years we have respected the power of water but only recently has science explained how something so benign and malleable can wear away stone.

In April 2022, a first-of-its-kind study, led by University of Minnesota-Twin Cities researchers, announced it had taken a closer look at how water erodes hard surfaces and concluded that tiny droplets behave like miniature bombs. 

“There are similar sayings in Eastern and Western cultures that ‘dripping water hollows out stone,’” said Xiang Cheng, senior author of the research paper and associate professor at the University of Minnesota Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. 

“Such sayings intend to teach a moral lesson: ‘Even if you are weak if you do something continuously, you will make an impact.’ But when you have something so soft as droplets hitting something so hard as rocks, you cannot help wondering, ‘Why does the drop impact cause damage?’ That question motivated our research.”

Their discovery, published in Nature Communications, outlined how a new technique called high-speed stress microscopy measured the force, stress, and pressure underneath liquid drops as they hit a surface. They found that the force exerted by a droplet spreads out with the impacting drop instead of concentrating in the center of the droplet, briefly exceeding the speed of sound as it spreads and creating a miniature “shock wave” across an impacted surface.

“Each droplet,” the team noted, “behaves like a small bomb, releasing its impact energy explosively and giving it the force necessary to erode surfaces over time.” 

And to think, all those micro-bombs were organically exploding as Egyptian slaves slushed rough-hewn rocks, for months at a time, in troughs filled with sand and water. Or, as Indian lapidaries rolled goat skin polishing bags filled with water and grit along the ground, or shook jars of water, abrasives, and pre-cut beads up and down on pre-tumbler “teeter-totter” boards. 

Rock Tumbling Glow Up

That said, not every type of stone is up to the task of enduring microscopic bombings in pursuit of that perfect shine.

“We were the first in the area to carry raw stones because it was growing more popular. People want to tumble their stones,” says Christine Seebold, evidential medium and owner of the Mind Body Spirit Center, with locations in Albany, Clifton Park, and Saratoga Springs, New York. 

“We try to give everyone a variety of stones to try, plus we do a rock tumbling kit for kids, which includes two dozen of the best basic choices.”

What makes the best basic choice? A great place to start is at that tried and true standard established in 1812 by German mineralogist, Friedrich Mohs. He chose 10 different minerals of varying degrees of hardness and assigned them a score of one (softest) to 10 (hardest). 

The ideal Mohs scale of hardness for rock tumbling success is between five to seven. One of the tumbling’s easiest tips to remember is ‘seven days for a hardness of seven,’ and standard rock tumbling instructions are generally based on material with a Mohs hardness of about seven (including agate, chalcedony, jasper, quartz, and petrified wood).

In Why Mohs Hardness Is Important, Hobart M. King of Rocktumbler.com wrote, that if you are tumbling a rough with a hardness of six, it will not take as long to shape and smooth as a rough with a hardness of seven. “Our opinion is that you can reduce the number of tumbling days by about one-and-a-half days for every degree of hardness under seven.”

Agate, Chalcedony, and Jasper, Oh Mohs!

Quartz is the benchmark mineral for a seven on the Mohs Hardness Scale and standing toe to toe with it is another top choice for tumbling, chalcedony. 

Don’t let its occasional delicate transparency and a wide variety of hues (thanks to impurities in an otherwise colorless state) fool you. Chalcedony can roll with the best of them and is the generic name for any kind of microcrystalline quartz, although its white and blue forms are most often referred to as chalcedony. (Fun fact: it’s also the “flint” used in ancient tools and weaponry.) 

Agate and jasper are varieties of chalcedony. All are colorful, durable, inexpensive, and deliver a satisfying luster after tumbling. An easy way to remember one from the other is that agate is any type of chalcedony that is translucent; jasper is chalcedony that is opaque, thanks to a greater degree of impurities mixed with its silica/quartz. Agate and jasper can form in the same volcanic environment so it’s not uncommon for a single rock to contain both translucent (agate) and opaque (jasper) portions.

Polished agate as ornamentation dates back to the Bronze Age (3300 BCE – 1300 B.C.) in Asia, and third-century B.C. Greece, it derived its name from naturalist Theophrastus, who named agate after the Sicilian shoreline of the Achates River where he found the stones. Popular agates include descriptive lace and moss agates, turritella (including petrified wood), and iridescent fire agate.

Varieties of jasper include imperial (green), the rarest — according to writer and rock seeker Jeremy Hall — so be sure of what you’re buying; brecciated (colorful red and yellow nodules); the dreamlike landscape; poppy, named for its distinctive tiny “blooms,” and ocean, found only at low tide in Madagascar.

Other types of chalcedony to consider for tumbling are aventurine, whose tiny inclusions look like shimmering flakes; carnelian and heliotrope (aka “bloodstone”); blue (Mt. Airy Blues or Mohave) or slightly lavender chalcedony, known as holly blue and found only in Oregon; and since the organic matter in petrified wood is often replaced by (opaque) chalcedony, it can technically be classified as jasper (and tumbles at roughly the same rate, four to five weeks, as agate or jasper).

Christine says other rocks her collectors love to tumble are quartz and tiger’s eye. Tiger’s eye, a crystalline type of quartz, can be polished to a high luster but experienced tumblers warn that tumbling pieces larger than an inch in size can result in “bruising” along the edges of the rocks, caused by quartz-on-quartz impacts inside a tumbling barrel.

Your best prospects are hard, dense, and smooth rocks like those mentioned above; avoid tumbling rocks with a gritty texture or that prove too soft after a “scratch test” (where a mineral, after being scratched by another mineral, will fall on the Mohs Hardness Scale).

Rockin’ Tik Tok

What’s hot in rocks is also being determined by younger, more social voices.

“We have kids come in the store educating their parents,” says Christine. “TikTok videos are teaching a lot of kids about stones and crystals. By the time they come in the store, they already know what they’re looking at and what they want. They say, ‘This way, Mom.’ They already know the stones they want.”

Driving popularity can also drive demand for certain rocks.

“Muldovite,” sighs Christine, citing a recent example of a rock so popular (thanks to TikTok) that it was hard to keep in stock or, from a metaphysical standpoint, align with the right energies.

“This is a really intense stone of transformation and spiritual awakening,” she says of the rare green tektite from the Czech Republic. “I had three people in one week come into my shop asking for it, and when I asked, ‘Are you sure? That’s a strong stone,’ they said, ‘Yes. We saw it on TikTok.’”

She’s not exaggerating. An April 30, 2021 article in Cosmopolitan by Rebekah Harding cited how muldovite, during the pandemic, racked up more than 280 million views on TikTok and its digital spiritual cousin, WitchTok. 

“There’s a neat reason this tektite became one of WitchTok’s biggest and most long-lived trends,” Harding wrote. “Moldavite removes blockages and obstacles on your path toward becoming your highest self. Often in the most chaotic way possible.”

So, muses Christine,  “If you can’t find a certain stone, it might be because it is selling out on TikTok as ‘Stone of the Week!’” 

TikTok trends are a long way from the days of goatskin bags and sand-filled troughs, and yet the attraction we feel for a pretty, shiny stone endures.   

This story about rock tumbling previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by L. A. Sokolowski.

The post Best Rock Tumbling Rocks first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Almost everyone interested in gemstones, whether from the gemological, historical or metaphysical perspectives, has read, or at least heard of, George Frederick Kunz’s book The Curious Lore of Precious Stones. Published 110 years ago, this classic is still being reprinted today.

Over his long career, Kunz would introduce jewelers to semiprecious colored gems; write more than 400 gem-related articles, books and reports; assemble world-class mineral collections; cofound the nation’s oldest mineral club; and compile the first formal accounts of birthstones and the metaphysical aspects of gems. Impressive achievements for a largely self-educated man.

The Young Rockhound

As a teenager in Manhattan and nearby Hoboken, New Jersey, Kunz collected minerals wherever he could find them, often at bridge and railroad construction sites. After attending public schools, he took night classes at Manhattan’s Cooper Institute, although he did not graduate. Despite being limited in his formal education, he read everything available about minerals to complement his already proficient field-collecting skills.

Kunz was still a teenager when he sold his 4,000-specimen mineral collection to the University of Minnesota for $400 ($8,000 in 2023 dollars). He later wrote that the sale wasn’t “so much for the money but to mark myself in the eyes of the world as a real collector.”

Tiffany & Co.

In the 1870s, American and European jewelers focused mainly on the “big four” gems — diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds. Kunz, however, was more interested in semiprecious gemstones or, as he later wrote, the “sea-green depths of tourmaline, the watery-blue of aquamarine, the red blood-cups of garnet, the misty nebula of moonstone.”

At that time, the nation’s most prestigious jeweler was then New York City’s Tiffany & Co. Founded by Charles Lewis Tiffany in 1837, the company dealt exclusively in the “big four” gems. But that began to change in 1875 when 19-year-old Kunz showed Tiffany a fine specimen of green tourmaline, then persuaded the jeweler to buy it, cut it into gems and fashion an experimental line of jewelry. To Tiffany’s surprise, the collection quickly sold out.

Kunz’s meeting with Charles Tiffany was a turning point in America’s experience with gems. Gem fashions now changed rapidly once Tiffany introduced the public to semi-precious gemstone jewelry. In 1879, Tiffany hired Kunz as his gemstone expert, a position he would hold for the rest of his life. Kunz’s many responsibilities included finding sources of the semiprecious, colored gemstones that now captured his employer’s—and the public’s—attention.

George Frederick Kunz the Writer

Kunz began publishing gem-related articles in 1881. Two years later he wrote a report titled “American Gems and Precious Stones” for the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) Mineral Resources of the United States, an annual, book-length publication.

Kunz’s reports on domestic gemstone discoveries and production for the USGS established the credibility of gemstones as a mineral resource and encouraged gemstone prospecting. Through these annual reports, Kunz also built a national network of correspondents that included prospectors, miners, geologists, mineralogists and mineral collectors. The USGS also appointed Kunz a “special agent” and regularly published his gemstone reports in Mineral Resources of the United States for 50 years.

In 1886, Kunz cofounded the New York Mineralogical Club. Still in existence today as the nation’s oldest, continuously active mineral club, the NYMC has been the model for the subsequent founding of hundreds of similar clubs across the nation. Kunz’s first book, Gems and Precious Stones of North America, published in 1890, utilized his research for his Mineral Resources of the United States reports.

The World-Class Collector

Through his work at Tiffany & Co., Kunz became acquainted with prestigious customers, among them the wealthy financier John Pierpont Morgan, a prominent collector of art, antiques and gemstones. In 1888, Morgan commissioned Kunz to assemble a gemstone collection for international exhibition. The 382-specimen collection that Kunz put together won two gold medals at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris.

In 1891, jointly financed by Morgan and Tiffany, Kunz traveled to Russia’s Ural Mountains to locate mine sources of gemstones. While in the Urals, Kunz acquired a quantity of demantoid, the green variety of andradite and the rarest and most valuable of the garnet gemstones. He also purchased newly mined alexandrite, the color-change variety of chrysoberyl. Charles Tiffany’s later successful marketing of demantoid and alexandrite in his Art Noveau and Art Deco jewelry styles kept both stones from gemological obscurity.

In 1900, Morgan commissioned Kunz to assemble another world-class collection of gems and minerals—the 4,000-specimen Second Tiffany-Morgan Collection. The following year, Morgan, again relying on Kunz’s collecting expertise, paid $100,000 (roughly $2 million in 2023 dollars) to acquire Philadelphia industrialist Clarence S. Bement’s spectacular 12,300-specimen collection. Morgan later donated these Kunz-assembled collections to New York City’s American Museum of Natural History.

The Tiffany Yellow Diamond Soon after 23-year-old George Frederick Kunz began work at Tiffany & Co., he received a daunting assignment—to design and supervise the cutting of a 287.42-carat, canary-yellow, South African diamond that Charles Tiffany had purchased for $18,000 ($500,000 in 2023 dollars). Kunz and other experts studied the stone for a year before deciding on a modified, square-antique-brilliant cut with 82 facets, 24 more than the traditional 58-facet cut. Kunz’s unconventional and rather daring approach successfully maximized the stone’s brilliance. The resulting 128.54-carat gem, now famed as the “Tiffany Yellow Diamond” and valued at $30 million, has since been worn by only four women, among them actress Audrey Hepburn in a 1961 promotion for the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s; Lady Gaga at the 2019 Academy Awards ceremony; and Beyoncé in a 2021 Tiffany & Co. advertisement. As part of the enduring legacy of George Frederick Kunz, this spectacular diamond has appeared in various settings and is permanently displayed at Tiffany’s flagship store in New York City.

Birthstones & the Metaphysical

In 1891, Tiffany & Co. published Kunz’s Natal Stones: Sentiments and Superstitions Connected with Precious Stones, which traced the ancient Biblical and Hindu origins of birthstones, and documented what had for centuries been only loose tradition. Although just 36 pages long, Natal Stones heightened public interest in birthstones and sharply increased sales of Tiffany’s birthstone jewelry. In 1912, the National Association of Jewelers of America formalized Kunz’s birthstone list. Tiffany & Co. regularly reprinted updated editions of Natal Stones until 1931; modern reprints continue to be available today.

Largely at Tiffany’s expense, Kunz amassed a huge, personal gemological library; while most of these volumes addressed the mineralogical aspects of gemstones, a significant number of rare works dealt with the historical, healing, occult, spiritual, religious and metaphysical aspects of gems.

In 1913, many of these volumes served as Kunz’s research base for The Curious Lore of Precious Stones, the first comprehensive treatment of gem lore. Widely marketed in North America and Great Britain, this enormously popular book boosted sales of gems and jewelry, and greatly stimulated interest in the metaphysical aspects of gems. Although first editions currently sell for as much as $1,000, affordable reprints are still sold today.

Yogo Sapphires & Kunzite

Prospectors, miners, jewelers and collectors often mailed Kunz specimens to identify. “It would perhaps seem improbable that, sitting at a desk in New York, one [could] discover a gem mine in Montana, yet that is just what happened to me,” Kunz later recalled. “. . . upon examination I found certain crystals to which little attention had been paid, but which I discovered to be fine blue sapphires.” Thanks to Kunz’s identification, Montana’s Yogo Gulch became the Western Hemisphere’s greatest source of gem sapphire.

Kunz also received a package of pinkish-purple, transparent crystals from a Pala, California, miner who needed help with identification. After Kunz identified the crystals as a new color variety of spodumene, members of the New York Academy of Science named this variety “kunzite” in Kunz’s honor.

In 1910, after identifying a violet-pink stone from Madagascar as a new color variety of beryl, Kunz named it “morganite” for his longtime friend and benefactor John Pierpont. Morgan.

Respect and Recognition

Kunz despised jewelers who took advantage of an unsuspecting public by passing off altered or look-alike gems as the real thing and enjoyed posing as an average jewelry customer. He was once shown a necklace with gems that the jeweler described as “exceptionally fine.”

“Really, well, after all, that’s not a high price for it—I paused, the dealer beamed—if it were genuine. I leaned over the table, lifted and dropped the necklace disdainfully. What do you mean asking such a price for a flagrant forgery?”

As Kunz’s notoriety grew, honorary degrees compensated for his lack of formal education. He received a master’s degree from New York City’s Columbia University; a doctor-of-philosophy degree from Germany’s University of Marburg; and a Ph.D. from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Kunz proudly used his academic designations in all his later articles and books.

In a 1928 interview with The Saturday Evening Post, Kunz explained what had sustained his interest in gems and minerals for more than 60 years: “Every boy has his passions—his collection of stamps or coins or marbles or what not, and the only difference between another boy’s and mine was that I never outgrew it.”

George Frederick Kunz’s Legacy

Kunz remained active with Tiffany & Co. until his death in 1932 at age 75. While making many contributions to the world of gems and minerals, Kunz had also succeeded financially. His estate was valued at $114,000—the equivalent of more than $2 million today.

Kunz’s bestowed his final gift posthumously in 1933 when his estate sold his personal gemological and mineralogical library of several thousand rare books, pamphlets and articles to the USGS for the token sum of one dollar. Today, the Kunz Collection is available to researchers at the USGS Library in Reston, Virginia.

Kunz’s obituary in Science magazine concluded with “. . . it is doubtful if [anyone] ever lived a richer or more interesting life.” And when it came to gemstones and gems, that was probably true. Interestingly, the word “gemologist” replaced the term “gem expert” almost immediately after Kunz’s death. That was fitting, for George Frederick Kunz, as America’s first gemologist, had advanced the world of gems culturally, commercially, scientifically, and metaphysically.

This story about George Frederick Kunz previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Steve Voynick.

The post Who is George Frederick Kunz? first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

This iconic World Heritage Site encapsulates a central theme of “Paradise” with its harmonious blending of so many elements including the phrase “Enter Thou My Paradise” inscribed over one entrance.

The Taj Mahal, which translates as the “Crown of Palaces,” has been called the jewel of Muslim art in India. This “ultimate symbol of love and loss” perched above the Yamuna River in Agra in the state of Uttar Pradesh, began with Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, who reigned from 1628 to 1658.

Keeping a Memory Alive

Although he had many wives, Jahan had one great love, his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died while giving birth to their fourteenth child in 1631. It is said Jahan’s hair turned gray overnight in his grief. To keep his wife’s memory alive forever, he immediately commissioned a great mausoleum to house her remains. Eventually, it would also serve as the tomb of Jahan himself, forever side-by-side with Mumtaz in what was meant to replicate paradise on earth.

Construction began in 1632, and the famous white marble mausoleum was completed in 1648. It took another five years (until 1653) to complete the entire 42-acre complex, which includes reflecting pools, courtyards, gardens, cloisters, crenelated walls, and associated majestic buildings (including a mosque and a guesthouse) constructed in red sandstone from Delhi. But the 115-foot high dome of the mausoleum stands out as the centerpiece. Its translucent white marble from Makrana quarries in Rajasthan (transported nearly 500 miles via bullock carts and elephants) contrasts with the red sandstone of the surrounding buildings and walls. The color of the marble shifts with the hours of the day : pink in the rising sun, white in strong daylight, golden-hued at sunset and under the moon. Some say this was intentional, to replicate the ever-shifting moods of Mumtaz.

Surprising Materials

A surprise for many is that the Taj Mahal is more brickwork than marble. The white marble forms just a thin veneer. Had it been crafted entirely of marble blocks, the tomb would not have been able to support its own weight.

Under the supervision of Ustad Ahmad Lahauri and a board of court architects, construction involved masons, stonecutters, sculptors, and inlay artisans along with the best calligraphers in the land. In all, more than 20,000 laborers formed a city-within-city surrounding the complex in a project that, in its day, was comparable to the Apollo moon shot of the 1960s. And its cost was similarly exorbitant.

How much would it cost to build the Taj Mahal today? Sources are conflicting. In U.S. dollars, numbers range from as low as $70 million to as high as $1 billion. No matter how you do the math and the exchange rate, that is a lot of rupees!

Symbolic Designs

Because the Islamic faith forbids the use of human faces or imagery in decoration, the surface of the mausoleum relies on symbolism to reflect both natural beauty and divinity. Per one source, it was designed to represent “an earthly replica of one of the houses of Paradise.”

Floral Symbols

Architects chose abstract geometric forms, including herringbone inlays here and there, but especially floral designs. Flowers were considered natural symbols of the divine realm.

The designs include realistic vases, flowers, and vines carved in three-dimensional relief and polished within the marble on some panels. Such carved relief works particularly grace the lower portions of the walls.

What really catches the eye are the inlays of stylized flowers. While commonly called peitra dura (“hard stone”) from Italian traditions, in India it is called parchin kari. Precious and semi-precious stones ranging from large slabs to tiny slivers were cut, shaped, polished, inlaid, and leveled to the enclosing marble. The floral patterns they represent include tulips, lilies, irises, poppies, and narcissus. To create shaded effects, a single flower might have a dozen or more carnelian pieces in colors of varied intensity.

Taj Mahal Pattern Books

To this day, Indian artisans hold “pattern books” to craft designs originating with the Taj Mahal into marble countertops, tables, and small jewelry boxes. While few of us will ever be in a position to create or purchase a monument on the scale of the Taj Mahal, parchin kari has long been a vibrant cottage industry in this region of India.

But buyer beware! Quality varies considerably, from the finest marble that is highly durable and takes a fine polish to soft, porous marble or even soapstone that may be inlaid with plastics. The real deal is stunning to behold.

While parchin kari in airport gift shops may go for cheap, Shah Jahan spared no expense in sourcing stones for inlay from all around India, the Middle East, and Asia to grace the mausoleum for his beloved Mumtaz. For instance, carnelian came from Arabia, jade from China, jasper from Punjab, turquoise from Tibet, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, and sapphires from Sri Lanka. In all, some 28 types of gemstones were used as inlay.

Common Gems in the Taj Mahal

It’s said the lapidary artists decorating the Taj Mahal chose stones “whose luster and color never fades.” Here are just a few:

• White, yellow, and black marble
• Blue lapis lazuli
• Red and orange carnelian
• Green jade
• Blue turquoise
• Jasper in varied colors
• Green malachite
• Green-and-red bloodstone
• Multi-colored banded agates and chalcedonies
• Garnet
• Sapphire

In addition to flowers, inlaid calligraphy composed of jasper and black marble graces several parts of the Taj Mahal, particularly recessed arches. The calligraphy highlights passages from the Qur’an that were chosen by the Persian Abdul Haq, who was greatly admired for his skill as a calligrapher. He used an elegant cursive style known as “thuluth script.” Shah Jahan graced him with the title “Amanat Khan Shirazi” for his work. Such was the attention to detail that calligraphy in higher parts of the building is slightly larger to reduce “skewing effects” when viewed from the ground. Everything about the Taj Mahal had to be pleasing to the eye with balance, symmetry, and harmony.

Taj Mahal Through the Years

Shah Jahan was a rich man with a rich kingdom and as such could afford inlay using the best of precious and semi-precious stones. However, if you were a ruler in a province lacking in resources but you at least wanted to look rich, you had plaster painted to look like inlaid marble or plaster inlaid with colored glass and mirrors simulating gemstones and silver. But, try as they may, none came close to replicating the real deal at the Taj Mahal.

Decorative elements in the Taj also once included gold and silver, including a gold spire atop the main dome. But Agra was invaded in the 18th century by armies of the Jat rulers of Bharatpur. They took away all gold and silver elements, as well as an agate chandelier. At some sites, all precious stones had been pried from walls and it is said that invading armies would pile wood in halls and set it ablaze to capture silver as it melted and dripped to the floors. In light of such carnage elsewhere, we are lucky the Taj Mahal escaped further vandalism over the many centuries.

By the end of the 19th century, the Taj Mahal complex had fallen into a state of disrepair. Recognizing the significance and beauty of even a tarnished Taj Mahal after India had been colonized by the British, viceroy Lord Curzon embarked on a restoration project that was completed in 1908. Despite ups and downs, India and the world continue to recognize and appreciate the beauty, symmetry, and significance of this incomparable gem of love, loss, and paradise. In the words of the poet Rabindranath Tagore, it will forever stand as “a teardrop on the face of eternity.”

Explore More

• Official website of the Taj Mahal: www. tajmahal.gov.in/

• UNESCO Taj Mahal profile: whc.unesco.org/en/list/252

• Explore the Taj Mahal: www.taj-mahal.net/newtaj/textMM/Inlay.html

This story about Taj Mahal gems previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story and Photos by Jim Brace-Thompson.

The post Exploring Taj Mahal Gemstones first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.