Are the oceans leaky bathtubs? #Lawsonite is partially responsible! 20% of the ocean's water may lave drained into the deep mantle over the last billion years.*

Don't blame Canada! The Cascade subduction zone is too warm. #MinCup23 #Geology #Minerals #WaterCycle

* Korenaga, Planavsky, & Evans (2017) Phil. Trans. A.

limpet teeth, a composite containing #goethite, are the strongest known biological material in tension -twice as strong as spider silk.
#MinCup23 #Limpet #Minerals #Materials
https://daily.jstor.org/worlds-strongest-material-limpet-teeth/

Rumney, R.M.H., Robson, S.C., Kao, A.P. et al. Biomimetic generation of the strongest known biomaterial found in limpet tooth. Nat Commun 13, 3753 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31139-0
Open Access
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31139-0

Today's #MinCup23 contenders on display in the NHM London. The origins of their names allude to their physical properties:
- Dioptase is from the Greek words διά (dia) and όπτομαι (optomai) which mean "through" and "visible", in reference to its visible internal cleavage
- Crocoite is from the Greek word κρόκος (krókos), which means "saffron". Both the mineral and the spice share the same vibrant colour

Vote for your favourite: https://www.mineralcup.org/2023/campaigns/round-1-match-5

#geology #minerals #mineral #etymology

#Sodalite is one of over 400 mineral type found in a quarry at Mont Saint-Hilaire, east of #Montreal, where an alkali-rich mafic magma intruded carbonates.

The Mineralogical Association of Canada has published a beautiful book on this locality (2nd ed. out later this year):
https://mac-amc.myshopify.com/products/copy-of-minerals-with-a-french-connection

#MinCup23 #Quebec #Minerals #MontSaintHilaire

#Bancroft Ontario (across the Ottawa River from the Yates mine in the Otter Lake area) styles itself the "Mineral Capital of Canada". A vast number of locations are described in MinDat.org:
https://www.mindat.org/loc-224159.html

#Ontario #Canada #Minerals #MinCup23

That was a tough match but #TeamQuartz managed to pull through in the end! Thank you for voting for the best mineral and goodbye cinnabar 👋 #MinCup23 #geology #mineral #minerals

Neighbor a few doors down has half her rock shop out in the driveway this weekend, Just gobs of cool stuff..

#minerals #rockhounds #neighbors #TheCoolKids

This large amethyst geode is on display in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. It formed 130 million years ago when there was intense volcanism in Brazil. Enough lava was produced to cover the British Isles in 3.2 km of lava flows. Amethyst then crystallised in cavities in the solidified lava

#TeamQuartz #MinCup23 #minerals #mineral #volcanism @MineralCup 11/?

This website provides a great summary of how quartz clocks work: http://explainthatstuff.com/quartzclockwatch.html

So remember, whenever you check the time, you should thank the tiny little quartz crystal vibrating thousands of times a second!

#TeamQuartz #MinCup23 #minerals #mineral 8/?

The quartz inside the oscillator is shaped like a tuning fork and when a current passes through it, it vibrates at a frequency of 32,768 Hz (32,768 times a second). The circuit in a watch/clock counts the number of quartz vibrations and uses it to generate a regular electrical pulse at a rate of one per second. This then powers the gears or the LCD display in the watch/clock

Photo © Chribbe76: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inside_QuartzCrystal-Tuningfork.jpg
#TeamQuartz #MinCup23 #minerals #mineral @MineralCup 7/?

A quartz oscillator is used to regulate time inside most watches and clocks. This is because quartz is piezoelectric, which means that when it’s squeezed, it generates an electric current. This also works the other way round too: when an electric current passes through it, it vibrates at a certain frequency. The quartz oscillator is circled in the picture below

©Garitzko: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Armbanduhr_Rueckseite.jpg
#TeamQuartz #MinCup23 #minerals #mineral @MineralCup 6/?

Just look at all the detail you can carve into quartz! This is the Lothair Crystal, a 11.5cm wide piece of rock crystal engraved with scenes from a biblical story

© Ashley Van Haeften: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothair_Crystal

Make sure you vote for quartz here: https://www.mineralcup.org/2023/campaigns/round-1-match-2

#TeamQuartz #MinCup23 #minerals #mineral @MineralCup 5/?

Art lovers! Vote quartz! There's a long history of quartz being carved into beautiful pieces.

Have you ever visited a museum or gallery and seen something carved out of rock crystal? Well that's just a colourless variety of quartz. This is a Fatimid (#Egyptian) jug carved from quartz, late 10th to early 11th century

Photo © Dallas Museum of Art

#TeamQuartz #MinCup23 #art #minerals #mineral @MineralCup 4/?

I know many people are upset ice didn't make it into #MinCup23. Well, why not vote #TeamQuartz? The oldest name for quartz is the Greek word κρύσταλλος (kristallos) which was first used 300-325 BCE. Kristallos means cold - it was believed that crystals were a type of ice that couldn't melt because it was made by the gods ❄❄❄

Vote for quartz here! https://www.mineralcup.org/2023/campaigns/round-1-match-2

#geology #mineral #minerals @MineralCup

A fact for the #etymology nerds! The word quartz describes one of its physical properties. It comes from the German word "Quarz" which has origins in various Slavic words for "hard" (e.g., Czech "tvrdý", Polish "twardy", Serbian/Croatian "tvrd"). Quartz is a pretty hard mineral as it's 7 on the Mohs hardness scale

#mineral #minerals #MinCup23 #TeamQuartz @MineralCup 2/?

Cinnabar has a slight lead over quartz and I'm not happy about that! This is the start of a *long* thread for #TeamQuartz which I'll be updating throughout the day.

Quartz is my all time favourite mineral. Despite its simple formula (SiO2), it can be found in a variety of colours and morphologies 1/?

Vote for quartz here: https://www.mineralcup.org/2023/campaigns/round-1-match-2

#MinCup23 #minerals #mineral #quartz

The first match of #MinCup23 is now live! Vote here: https://www.mineralcup.org/2023/campaigns/campaigns/campaigns/campaigns/round-1-match

Kaolinite gets my vote! It has so many uses plus it can be found in zebra rock. This is a siltstone/claystone containing quartz, sericite, kaolinite, dickite and alunite. The reddish-brown bands are formed by the rhythmic precipitation of hematite 1/2

#minerals #mineral #geology @MineralCup

The last few days have been hollowing. I bought myself a treat to help. Selenite chunk of goodness, now living beside some big calcites.

#selenite #calcite #minerals #crystals #collections #rocks #nature #pagan #altar

extractive industry continues to treat the #earth and her ancient precious #minerals as little more than profit-potential. Meanwhile, this self-dealing too often entails the wholesale #exploitation of #IndigenousPeoples and the destruction of the #SacredLands and #ecosystems upon which our communities depend.

Indigenous Peoples across northern Nevada are no strangers to this paradigm. In our newest video installment documenting the #OxSamCamp resistance,

2/10

#Sapphirine has a complicated structure, with Mg in two sites and Al both four-fold and six-fold coordinated. It has only about 15 wt% SiO2.

It has monoclinic symmetry, but still can form attractive crystal faces when it can grow unimpeded. A good example is on the cover of Dexter Perkin’s on-line mineralogy text, found at:
https://opengeology.org/Mineralogy/

In polarized light, sapphirine changes color with orientation (called pleochroism).

#MinCup23 #Minerals #Mineralogy #ThinSection