Crystals

Gemstones have fascinated mankind since the times of the caveman and they captivate us still.
Whether you enjoy collecting gemstones for your mineral collection, or use them for healing, for spiritual reasons or for divination, they are always fascinating.


What are crystals?

Basically, they are a solid material in which atoms are arranged in regular patterns.
This applies to the salt crystals in your kitchen as much as to the diamond in a ring.
You might think that glass is a crystal, but it isn't.
There is no crystalline structure because it is cooled too quickly.

The actual word crystal comes from the Ancient Greek word krystallos which means icy cold.
The Ancient Greeks believed that clear quartz was ice that had frozen so hard it would never melt.

What makes one crystal differ from another?

It all comes down to its internal atomic structure.

Take the graphite in a pencil and a diamond. They are both formed of carbon but they differ in their internal structure, In graphite, the atoms are linked in layers, which are only weakly bonded so it is a very soft material. In diamond, each atom is bonded to four others in a particular rigid compact structure.
This makes it the hardest known substance. Diamond has undergone intense extremes of heat and pressure to be formed in this way.

Identifying crystals

Some crystals can look identical to the naked eye, such as citrine and yellow topaz.

You need to judge a stone by its colour, its cleavage, its hardness and its specific gravity.

Most people are familiar with the scale of hardness with talc the lowest at 1 and diamond the hardest at 10.

Synthetic crystals

You can grow synthetic crystals from seed and are actually flawless.
It takes several months to grow a beautiful emerald, but under the microscope its structure is not the same as a naturally occcurring emerald.
The quartz used in watches and electronics is synthetic quartz. You may not realise that all naturally occurring gems have flaws whether they are microscopic inclusions of another material or clearly visible like the rutile found in rutilated quartz.