Everything About Quartz

hi everybody I'm Lonnie with everything nature and today we are gonna learn about one of the most common minerals on planet Earth and what gives some of its more flashy forms their unique colorations so stick around quartz is one of the most abundant minerals on the planet you can find it pretty much anywhere that has dirt although not always in the pretty nice crystals that most people associate with quartz now this is what quartz looks like not really but if you're a geologist that's how you see it quartz is silicon based and is one of the harder type of minerals that you can find there's a scale that used to measure the hardness of minerals called Mohs and it ranges from one in which is the softest to ten one would be like talc or graphite they're really soft you can scratch them with your fingernail and ten would be like diamonds not much can scratch of diamonds now quartz usually is about seven seven and a half in that range being so widespread quartz is a big family of minerals but there are some that are more like say distant cousins than actual family members things like jasper tiger's eye and thinning now usually when most people think of quartz they think of something like this it's really really pretty huh these are usually called clear quartz but there are so many more types of quartz crystal different things like heat and irradiation cause them to form in different colors and they can even form with other minerals trapped inside trapped forever in a clear crystal - watching the world go by we're going to take a look at a few different varieties of quartz and see what makes these different family members similar and will make them their own unique crystals this one here is amethyst and it's a crystal most people are familiar with although a lot of people don't realize it's just a purple variety of quartz crystal the amethyst can often be found inside the geodes and as a matter of fact some of the biggest geodes in the world have amethyst inside now amethyst get their lovely purple color from high-energy radiation and iron content as the crystals are forming just a real quick PSA if you own it can with this crystal don't keep it in direct sunlight because the UV rays will actually fade at the purple color now a similar type we have here is called citrine citrine usually ranges from a nice yellow to orange to even like a dark brown now citrine is sort of like amethyst sibling they both have traces of iron in them and need radiation in order to form the color but amethyst is formed at much higher temperatures even though citrine is one of the most rare types of quartz crystal you can find it at pretty much every Rock shop and mineral sale you go to because it's relatively easy to turn amethyst in the citrine by pretty much is baking it when a piece of amethyst is heated up over 500 degrees it will actually turn orange and look a lot like citrine there are a lot of shady practices going on in the world of rock mineral collecting I guess you could say it's a pretty dirty hobby I'm sorry about that now here's a little bit different type of quartz and ever since my daughter was born I'm a little more fond of this one this is rose quartz now the biggest difference between rose quartz and the rest of the quartz crystal family is you will only find this in massive form never in crystal form in rocks peak massive means it's more rock shaped than crystal shaped rose quartz can range from a very light pink to dark magenta rose quartz is transparent but never translucent it is also very evenly colored unlike other quartz that is usually darker near the Crystal point finally we have smoky quartz now this lovely gray brown or even black color comes from just the right combination of radiation and aluminum now similar to how amethyst can be turned into citrine by heating it regular clear quartz can be turned smoky by irradiating it also the smoky color of a natural smoky quartz can be intensified and dark in the same way smoky quartz takes very long periods of irradiation to develop its color as well as cooler temperatures something around a hundred degrees are cooler well compared to the 500 degrees or so that it takes for citrine to develop 100 degrees is on the cool side and before we finish up we're going to look at a few different types of quartz that have actually formed with other minerals inside them we call these inclusions or included quartz some of the more common ones are related quartz the rutile crystal needles formed first then the courts kind of grew around them here's an example of it tourmaline included quartz now some quartz can even have water or pockets of oil trapped inside and as you turn them and move them you can actually see little bubbles moving around inside them well there you go I hope everybody enjoyed learning a little bit more about different types of quartz crystal and it may be one of the most common minerals on the planet but it deserves a little appreciation thank you very much we'll see you next time on everything nature if you love learning about cool naturey things please like this video and subscribe to everything nature thank you very much

Channel: Everything Nature

Views: 131,836

Keywords: Quartz, Intro, Mineral (Rock Type), The Crystals (Structure), Education (TV Genre), Science (TV Genre), Geology (Field Of Study), Amethyst (Material), Mineral Collecting (Interest)

Id: XWF4ffCxvso

Length: 6min 9sec (369 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 06 2015