Sunday, January 16, 2011

Cu Later - GEO 034

GEO 034
Native Copper
Class: Mineral
Location: Michigan

Oh wow, so apologies again for not posting in awhile but I've basically been gone all week. But last week I went to the King Tutankhamen exhibit down at Times Square then headed over to the American Museum of Natural History for the rest of the day. It was quite awesome and I'd tell you all to check out the exhibit, but it closes tomorrow and then Tut's artifacts are going back to Egypt to stay. But in March, Discovery is having a Pompeii exhibit starting in March so hopefully I'll be going to that as well.

Anyway, I'll post a fairly neat looking mineral for today. I'm sure you could probably guess what this piece really is, it looks almost like gold but with a coppery color. Of course this is copper in its native form. This particular specimen is from closer to home than most of the other geology collections. It was dug up in the Caledonia Mine in Ontonagon County, Michigan. And I just checked out the Caledonia Copper Mining Company's website and have to say it looks like fun. If you sign up ahead of time they will give you four hours to dig through a large pile of excess ore (for free) and you can keep any treasures you find. So I really want to check this out now.

Copper on the other hand occurs in this native form before it's melted down to make pipes and other useful items. Seeing as it's a native element it should come as no surprise that its chemical composition is simply Cu (also if you're wondering why copper is Cu it's because its Latin name is cuprum). It is fairly weak, only registering between a 2.5 and a 3 on Moh's Scale of Hardness (10 being diamond), but it has a fairly decent specific gravity with a density of 8.94 (water being 1). If you want to learn more, such as crystal structure and such check out this copper data page.

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