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    Playing Around with Minerals & Gemstones
    Playing Around with Minerals & Gemstones
    Playing Around with Minerals & Gemstones
    Ebook72 pages50 minutes

    Playing Around with Minerals & Gemstones

    By Allan Taylor

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    About this ebook

    This is an introductory book for everyone about how to explore the subject of minerals and gemstones. The mysteries of identification are revealed and simple tests outlined. School teachers will find here much useful science resource material on the chemistry and physics involved to enthuse their students with thoughts of future career options. The materials science departments of major corporations produce a multitude of gemstones as spin-offs from crystal growing research, including rubies, emeralds and alexandrites. The earth sciences need more technologists and engineers and the jewellery trade needs more people knowledgeable about gemstones. This book is designed to awake an interest in minerals and gems that can be put to good use either as a career option or new hobby.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAllan Taylor
    Release dateSep 4, 2014
    ISBN9781311832405
    Playing Around with Minerals & Gemstones
    Author

    Allan Taylor

    Allan Taylor is the minister of education at First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Georgia, where Sunday School attendance has grown from 2,500 to 5,000 under his leadership. He is also the founder of Ember to Blaze Ministries and writes Sunday School, leadership, and training materials including his previous book, The Six Core Values of Sunday School. Allan and his wife, Linda, have three children and two grandchildren.

    Read more from Allan Taylor

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      Book preview

      Playing Around with Minerals & Gemstones - Allan Taylor

      Playing Around with Minerals and Gemstones

      by Allan Taylor

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Minerals and Gemstones ... what are they?

      Some Simple Tests

      Fluorescence

      Specific Gravity

      Liquid Immersion

      Refractive Index

      Polarized Light

      Polariscope

      Optic Axis

      Spectroscope

      Crystal Systems

      Manmade Gemstones

      Gemstone Bead Jewellery

      Gemstones in Miniature

      Prospecting for Gemstones

      Crystal Meditation

      Conclusions

      Bio

      Copyright 2014 Allan Taylor

      Smashwords Edition

      License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Photo Attribution

      Cover Image

      Photo taken by Allan Taylor of items mentioned in the text. Octagonal cut 79 carat smoky quartz from Brazil; oval 22.5 ct manmade hydrothermal citrine; bead jewellery 6 mm , bronze wire rings with malachite/freshwater pearl, and jade with garnet; and bracelet of agate and pearls.

      Introduction

      This book serves as an introduction to the study of minerals and gemstones for those people who may never have given them a thought. Hopefully there is substance here to attract the interest of a wide spectrum of curious readers, liked retired people, school children and their teachers, house wives, and men and women who may be looking for a new challenge or hobby. Minerals and gemstones are wonderful things that must be cherished by all, rich and poor. The study of minerals and gemstones will help us all to move to a more prosperous world.

      A study of gemstones may at first sight seem frivolous, but for the past 150 years it has been the backbone of research into crystal chemistry and physics leading to many wonderful inventions that make the present information and space age possible. The studies of geology, chemistry and physics to do with gemstones are boundless and you can take these studies as far as you want. Coupled with this is the pleasure of wearing the flowers of the mineral kingdom, by displaying wonderful jewellery having valuable diamonds, rubies and emeralds, or whatever gemstone takes your fancy. Thanks to the advancement of science, even the poorest individual can now afford to be adorned with manmade gemstones as never before.

      I live in Australia and minerals are very important to the economy. Australia is a major world producer of the following minerals and in gemstones, particular so for diamonds, opals and sapphire. Australia is a major world producer of the following minerals:

      1st for rutile, zircon, bauxite and alumina

      2nd for gold, iron ore, lithium and manganese ore

      3rd for uranium, and lead, zinc

      4th for silver, nickel and black coal.

      This equates with a huge number of geologists, metallurgists and mining engineers needed to keep the mining industry going. Therefore we need to encourage students to become interested in minerals. Gemstones are one attractive entry point to a further study of minerals.

      Minerals and Gemstones ... what are they?

      One can imagine the mineral kingdom as having useful ore minerals, which can be likened to edible vegetables, whilst the gemstones are beautiful flowers to be admired. So we have bauxite as the main ore of aluminium, but this element also flowers as ruby and sapphire gemstones which are composed of alumina. So there are various forms of the same thing that exist in Nature. It is the job of the geologist, mineralogist and gemmologist to sort out what's what and evaluate the prospects.

      Usually a mineral has a well defined chemical composition and crystal structure, which is result of the size and type of atoms it is composed of and how closely they are packed and bonded together. Quartz, for example, is found as very pure crystals often 99.9% pure, and so too with diamond, both crystal structures being very fussy about allowing foreign atoms to substitute within. However, there are other types of crystal were the structure does allow a large variation in chemical composition, which is called a solid solution, like a liquid solution, such as in the Garnet Family.

      The gemstone diamond is composed of pure carbon having exceptionally strong covalent bonding to give a dense mineral which is the hardest substance known to man. However, by rearranging the crystal structure into a planar configuration we get the polymorph mineral graphite which has many unique and useful properties. It also is pure carbon but is very soft (Moh hardness 1 to 2 compared to 10 for diamond), and has many uses (e.g., pencils, dry lubricant, crucibles

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