GEO 012
Citrine
Class: Mineral
Location: Unknown (Eastern NY?)
Just as a heads up, I've been slowly converting older pictures to the new style with the scale and copyright on the sand. Also, let me know what you think of the new style and layout of the page. There is now a sidebar that displays the latest comments, which is up as a test for now. Anyway today's a specimen from the Geology Collection and while I'm not positive on what mineral species it is I've got it down to a few culprits. Due to the color and structure I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is citrine (a yellow/orange variety of common quartz). However I feel that this could also be fluorite, but for now I figure it to be citrine.
Quartz (SiO2) is a very common mineral and I'm fairly certain many of you all have seen quartz in one of its many forms. When it's purple it is known as Amethyst, pink is known as Rose Quartz, black forms a cool looking Smoky Quartz, and Milky Quartz is probably the most abundant (in Central New York at least) in its pure form (it is, surprisingly, white). As it turns out many citrines actually start out as amethyst but when heat is applied within the Earth the color will change into citrine. Because it is actually a quartz, citrine has the same hardness on Moh's Scale of Hardness: a 7. The location of this specimen is hazy, I received it as a gift and it was purchased at a shop on a mountain, but I'm not sure if it came from a site on the mountain or was imported from somewhere else. So it is temporarily from Eastern New York but that is very sketchy. If you want to learn some more about November's birthstone citrine.
No comments:
Post a Comment