Rojo Eh - GEO 046

GEO 046

Red Mica

Class: Mineral

Location: Canada

So I hope everything went well over the weekend for those who celebrated Christmas and I got a brand new camera that has a super zoom and focus so expect some very nice pictures for the smaller objects in the museum. Also, it has a nice feature that allows me to draw a line and it gives me an exact measurement of how long it is. So I grabbed the first thing I saw in the museum that had a label and presto I present you a nice Red Mica specimen up from our neighbor to the North: Canada.

Now for those of you who know a thing or two about minerals will know that mica is just a broad term for a variety of minerals usually demonstrating very nice cleavage - meaning that they break along straight lines and in this case nice flat planes. There are two micas that are most well know, muscovite and biotite and they have a variety of uses. That being said I don't have the necessary equipment with me to determine the exact nature of this particular mica but a little bit of browsing the internet has me believing it to be Phlogopite.

If this red mica is in fact phogopite then its chemical composition is K(Mg,Fe,Mn)₃(AlSi₃O₁₀)(F,OH)_2. Micas are quite a useful mineral and are used in making capacitors for electrical components. If you would like more information on this particular red mica check here.