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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 @MineralCup
A big, round hollow rock (geode). The vanity is filled with white quartz crystals, and around the outer rims are grey coloured bands of agate.
Several crystals of pale purple amethyst rising out of a groundmass. The crystals are hexagonal prisms with pointed pyramidal tips.
A lump of colourless and transparent quartz filled with black needles of tourmaline. Label text: Quartz enclosing long needle-like tourmaline crystals. Locality unknown.
A brown polished slab of tiger's eye showing an optical effect called chatoyancy, where there are bands of gold which appear to glow.
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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/?
The Mohs hardness scale. The left column shows the hardness of minerals: Talc is 1, gypsum is 2, calcite is 3, fluorite is 4, apatite is 5, orthoclase is 6, quartz is 7, topaz is 8, corundum is 9, diamond is 10.

The right hand column shows the hardness of various everyday objects: A fingernail is 2.5, a copper penny is 3.5, a knife/glass plate is 5.5, a steel nail is 6.5, a masonry drill bit is 8.5.
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 3/?
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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/?
A jug carved from colourless quartz. There are various animals and floral patterns carved into the quartz. The base, handle and lid/spout are made of gold with colourful enamelling.
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/?
A circular piece of colourless quartz mounted in an ornate golden frame. There are several scenes carved into the quartz showing people interacting with each other.
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

Original photo © Garitzko: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Armbanduhr_Rueckseite.jpg
#TeamQuartz #MinCup23 #minerals #mineral @MineralCup 6/?
The inside of a basic ISA K63 low priced quartz wristwatch movement. Bottom right quartz crystal oscillator (circled in red). Bottom left button cell watch battery. Top right oscillator counter. Top left the coil of the stepper motor that powers the watch hands.
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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 tuning fork shaped piece of thin quartz inside an oscillator.
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!

Show your appreciation for quartz by voting here: https://www.mineralcup.org/2023/campaigns/round-1-match-2

#TeamQuartz #MinCup23 #minerals #mineral 8/?
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There is a lovely Hungarian poem about a family of clocks. The great-granddad was an hourglass, then there are clock towers, and alarm clocks, and finally the great-granddaughter is a quartz clock, and the line is "she has a grain of old sand in her heart." 🥰
#MinCup23 #quartz #poetry
Awww, I'll try to look up that story
You can read the poem here (with Google Translate, probably...). I had a translation somewhere but I can't find it now...
https://cimbora.net/az-en-szivemben-boldogok-a-targyak/rigo-bela-ora-dal.html
Quartz often contains inclusions of other minerals, such as this rutilated quartz glowing in the morning sunshine in the NHM London Mineral Gallery 🌟

Support quartz and vote for it here: https://mineralcup.org/2023/campaigns/round-1-match-2

#TeamQuartz #MinCup23 #mineral #minerals @MineralCup 9/?
A hexagonal crystal of quartz filled with golden needles of rutile. There are so many rutile needles inside, it almost looks like a mass of golden hair.

Label text: Fine bronze needles in quartz (Venus hair stone). Piz Aul, Switzerland.
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Amethyst is a purple variety of quartz whose colour is caused by iron replacing silicon and then exposure to gamma radiation. Its name comes from the Greek amethystos (not drunk) - it was thought that amethyst could cure drunkenness 🥴 #TeamQuartz #MinCup23 #minerals #mineral @MineralCup 10/?
A cluster of shiny purple amethyst crystals.

Label text: Quartz var. amethyst SiO2. South America. BIRUG 29432.
There is a "Greek myth" going around in esoteric circles about Dionysus and Amethyst, but it's actually a 17th century fakelore invention. Probably based on this belief.

Fun fact, the Hungarian version of D&D had gemstone-based magic, and lucky characters got to use amethyst to purify alcoholic drinks 😄

#ttrpg #DnD #folklore #minerals #MinCup23 #mythology