Aurichalcite - It falls apart and is really frustrating and I hate it.

Well, we've covered quite a few basic minerals and opened our eyes to the possibilities that abound in the world of geology. I think we are ready for the some of the meatier secondary minerals that no one cares about. And so, without any further introduction, here is today's mineral.

Now, a lot of people will try to tell you that in order to learn about something, you need to learn a lot of fancy facts about that something. That's mostly true. Well, alright, that's all the way true. But what about if we have a bunch of opinions about that thing as well? Are opinions any less important than facts? Technically yes. But I'm going to tell you my opinions about aurichalcite anyway.

Aurichalcite is a huge pain in the butt. Here's why;

OPINION/FACT 1 - It never shows up in a convinent place.

OPINION/FACT 2 - It falls apart faster than grandma's bones.

I would have preferred that picture say “aurichalcite” instead of “dreams”, but when you’re stealing stuff off the internet you can’t be choosey. Plus maybe it’s our dream to find aurichalcite, then it totally works. Things that fall apart easily are the worst. Once in elementary school I made this really cool hat for "make a cool hat and wear it to school" day. Man, that hat had everything. A pocket for band-aids, two or three safety pins, a little blinking light at the top, everything a man could want in a hat. Anyway, it fell apart right before I got to school and I was totally the laughing stock of the class. Or would have been if I had been popular enough to warrent some level of attention. Sometimes flying under the radar is the best way to survivie kids!

OPINION/FACT #3 - Aurichalcite is haunted.

Nope, made that one up.

OPINION/FACT #4 – Now here's the kicker. Aurichalcite is really awesome. There really isn’t a photo to go with this one.

Now, again, those things are just my opinions. So you can see that I’m pretty torn on the issue. The title of this post clearly states that I hate aurichalcite, yet OPINION/FACT #4 states quite ot opposite. The only thing worse than having conflicting opinions about a mineral is having an opinion about a mineral in the first place.

Anyway, let's move on. For you hard-core “I want to actually learn something” types (nerds), let’s get into the nitty-gritty. But first let’s look at this cool bottle I found!

I don’t know what’s in it, but I’m guessing that it’s about 120 years old! It could be whiskey! Or some sort of whiskey-based medical juice! Anyway, if you are going to be a geologist, you need to keep your eyes out for other neat artifacts when in the field. With any luck you too could find an old bottle filled with some toxic liquid.

Let’s take a look at some other pieces of aurichalcite.

The first thing that jumps out at us is that, it looks like fuzzy blue stuff. When a mineral forms as a bunch of fuzzy little needles like that, it’s known as having a acicular habit. Neat! If you are anything like me, then your first thought would be that it was formed thusly…

Sadly, no. Muppets play little to no part in the formation of aurichalcite. Yet. In order to make aurichalcite, you need five atoms of zinc…

Another five atoms of copper…

And a gob of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.

Bake them together and you get (Zn, Cu)5 (CO3)2 (OH)6 , or in otherwords…this…

FUN FACT FOR YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES!

Aurichalcite is an example of a "Pearly" luster folks! Have we talked about luster before? Seems like we have. Go read all the other posts and tell me if I've never talked about luster. DO IT!

END OF FUN FACT!

Remember azurite and malachite? They also feature the CO3 and OH guys. As a result these minerals are all included in the same family of minerals known as carbonates. Pour a little hydrochloric acid on these buggers and stand back! Actually you don’t have to. They just fizz a little. Neat to watch though. Remember to ask your parents before you mess around with the family hydrochloric acid reserves.

Now before you run off with your picks and shovels to find some of this admittedly cool looking mineral, remember my second opinion of aurichalcite. It is incredibly hard to keep in one piece. This is due to a whopping hardness of 1.5. This pretty much means that a stern look will cause it to blow up.

Not only that, but aurichalcite has a “brittle” tenacity. This means pretty much what you think it does. Tenacity is a measure of a mineral’s ability to deform under some sort of impact. Minerals that are brittle don’t deform much. They just turn to dust. Like a mummy playing catcher for a major-league baseball team.

So we start to get a picture of why collecting the stuff is a challenge. You have to break off a big piece of rock and just hope that some of it survives. And it never does.

So other than the sheer thrill of hunting geology’s most structurally inept mineral, why would anyone want the stuff? Well, like anything that contains copper, it can be used as an ore of….copper. It clocks in at 14.5% copper, which means that if you had 100 pounds of it, you could make 14.5 pounds of pure-copper pennies. That’s as scientific as I’m going to get. Also that may be wrong. I’m not doing a lot of fact-checking here. Anyway, that’s not all that great. But where does the zinc content come in at?? Wait for it…

44.8 Percent! That’s pretty good. So it’s an even better ore of zinc, which we apparently mostly use for making little piles of white powder.

A final aspect to consider while pondering the uses of aurichalcite is by realizing that it is a secondary mineral. Have I ever described what that means? I think I have, but I don’t even know what day it is, so who can tell. Anyway, when an ore body is forming, the initial minerals to show up are usually known as the primary minerals. These tend to be somewhat simple chemically (but also sometimes not). Later groundwater shows up and messes with the primary minerals (using such processes as oxidation, which involves a bunch of fancy words to describe). This messing-with results in the creation of the secondary minerals, which usually are a little more colorful from a chemical aspect. SO WHY SHOULD WE CARE??? Well, if you are a miner and you find a bunch of secondary minerals, it stands to reason that there will be a bunch of primary minerals still hanging out somewhere, and those usually have valuable stuff in them. If you are anyone else, you probably shouldn’t care at all.

Let’s delve into history a little bit now. After all, this blog has the word history right in the title. Seems like I’m obligated. Aurichalcite was first described back in the good old year of 1839 by some fellow named Bottger. No one seems to remember his first name though. Geology can be cruel as well as kind. Anyway, this Bottger fellow gave the blue-green mineral the name aurichalcite (“mountain copper”), which was close to the name that ancient Greeks gave to brass. Brass is made out of zinc and copper. Aurichalcite is made out of zinc and copper. You should be able figure out the rest.

They’re both made out of zinc and copper. There. I helped out the slower of our viewers.

So, there, we have a little background. Aurichalcite is a copper-zinc carbonate mineral that is incredible fragile and looks like blown up muppet. Where can you find some of this stuff for yourselves? Well, if you feel like getting really frustrated and are in Utah (or nearby), look for it here…

Those dots are probably a little off, but they are within 50 miles or so. Probably. Also that map is really small, so this is probably going to be inconvinent to the hard of seeing. If you can make out the numbers, they are…

1. Lucin District

2. Gold Hill District

3. Big Cottonwood District

4. Park City District

5. Ophir District

6. Tintic District

7. Lincoln District

8. Bradshaw District

9. Dixie Apex, uh, mine.

There are likely a billion other places. So when I said it was rare what I meant to say was that it is pretty common. In Utah anyway. I don’t know how Kansas is looking.

And so, there we are. We know what it is, how it forms, where we can find it, and how I feel about it. That’s more than Wikipedia will give you. They think they’re so great! Just because they don’t have to make up stuff doesn’t mean that they are better than me!

Enargite. The New Male Enhancement

Haha! Just kidding. Today's mineral won't "enlongen your manhood". In fact, if it does ANYTHING to your manhood you are probably holding it wrong. Geology isn't here to help you out in the bedroom. Pervert.

No, today's mineral is much like every other mineral out there. It sits there on your desk, and whenever you look at it it seems to say "Hey, why not go on dates instead of climbing around rock piles to collect more rocks that you'll stick in your garage and never look at again?" Rocks can be very observant. The answer is that rocks can't reject you. No, no matter how many night-farts you make, they'll never say they are too busy to go out with you. Anyway, let's move on.

Today's mineral is Enargite.



The enargite is that shiny grey stuff in that rock I'm holding. The white stuff is quartz. Go ahead and ignore that. Also ignore the lint-roller and half-eaten box of donuts in the background. They have very little to do with enargite. Well, unless your enargite is covered with lint. Let's take a closer look.



Nope, no lint. While we are on the topic, let's discuss rock collection-maintenance. Rocks are dusty. No matter how much you wash them, they will always seem to be covered in dust. And the more rocks you have, the more likely that everything else you own will become covered in dust as well. This includes your action figures, comic books, self-help books, even your ticket stub to the 2008 Comic Con. Yes, rocks will turn all your shrines to social inadequacy into dusty piles. Just like all the hopes and dreams you once had. This paragraph is bringing me down.

Anyway, a good way to keep the dust down is to keep all your rocks in the garage. In addition to keeping the dust down, it will help delay the process of people finding out that you are a weirdo who collects rocks. This paragraph is also bringing me down. Let's find some happy things to focus on. Here's a picture of enargite next to a bag of off-brand Cookie Crisp cereal.



And here it is next to some diabetes.



Sing it, enargite!



And here is a picture of a neat little spider carving I bought at a gas station once.



So what do those pictures tell us? Let's go create a LIST OF FACTS THAT WE KNOW (LOFTWK)

1. Enargite hates to pay for brand-name cereals
2. Enargite has a "metallic" luster. Remember what that means? That refers to that fresh, classy chrome look that fresh enargite has going on.
3. Enargite had a hit jazz record in the early 80's.
4. Rocks carved to look like other things are pretty cool.

There we go. That's a good start. Well, actually that's a horrible start. Those pictures don't tell us anything at all (except for fact #2). We'll have to turn to a book to figure out some real facts.

Behold! The big green book of dryly-delivered mineral facts!



This book may sound boring, but it looks great on a bookshelf. Well, it does when it's on there with a bunch of Bernstein Bears books. I should update my library collection.

So what does this book tell us? Well, it says here that enargite has a pathetic hardness of 3. That's pretty soft, nearly to the point where you could scratch it with your fingernails. With all that metallic luster you would expect it to be harder, but it isn't to be. Geology is full of disappointments. But before you lose all patience with our disappointingly soft mineral friend, watch as it brings these plants back to life!







BEHOLD! OUR MINERAL GRANTS ETERNAL LIFE TO UGLY BROWN PLANTS!!! Nah, I just watered them. But wouldn't that be cool?

Alright, so what's next? Let's look into what makes enargite. The answer may shock and amaze you.



Probably not though.

Enargite is made up of three atoms of our old friend copper...



Mixed with four atoms of our even older friend sulfur...



And a single atom of, well, arsenic.


For a final chemical formula of Cu3AsS4. Or as I like to think of it, (Pennies)3(Deadly)(Stinky)4. Remember how I once said that minerals with sulfur in them are known as Sulfates? Well, this one isn't. It's known as a sulfosalt. Want to know why? Yeah, me too.

FASCINATING LAST DAY OF SUMMER FACT ABOUT ENARGITE

Enargite has one perfect cleavage!




I found that picture while I was googling "Amazed", so stop thinking that I spend my days at work googling "cleavage". And besides, that's not the type of cleavage I was talking about. In geology, cleavage refers to how it breaks when you smash it (more or less). In enargite's case, it would smash in such a way that only one perfectly flat face would form. That's why it looks all shiny in the light! In fact, that's how it got its name! "Enargite" means "distinct" in Latin, which refers to the distinct cleavage. It's a handy way to tell the difference between two minerals that otherwise look exactly alike. Which most of them do. Yes, cleavage is an amazing thing.

END OF FASCINATING LAST DAY OF SUMMER FACT ABOUT ENARGITE

So, where were we? Ah yes, enargite. So why are we wasting our time even talking about this busty mineral? Well, I'll tell you. We can mine it! Not only can we, we do! Or did, I don't know if we do any more. If you can find enough of this stuff to mine (which is hard to do as it's somewhat uncommon), you can pull off the stinky and deadly parts of it and end up with pure copper, which you can then sell to your local copper interest.



Remember that chemical formula we looked at above? Well, that results in a mineral that is 48.3% copper! That's not great, but it will do. I don't know what you are going to do with the 19.1% arsenic or 32.6 percent sulfur. Maybe become that person who lives out on the edge of town and shoots at people who wander onto their property. They always seem to have lots of pretty unusual things on their land. You're going to need to grow a beard though. This includes the women.

SLIGHTLY LESS INTERESTING PART

So we can mine it for copper. As internet geologists, we don't care much about wealth. If we did we would put more efforts into our jobs. No, we are interested in knowing the origins of the very building blocks of our planet. Also, we appear to be interested in Chocodiles. Those things are so good. Anyway, based on our never-ending thirst for knowledge, it may interest you to know that enargite turns into all sorts of other things once oxygen gets involved. Yes-sir-ree, things get down-right funky.

Enargite isn't particularly stable. It's not going to blow up and tear your hands off, but it isn't really happy with itself. And so, it should come as no surprise that it will take any opportunity it can get to turn into something else. For example, say this thing happened....



(That's enargite. I hope you realized that. What if it met up with some water?)



You end up with this!



A fuzzy green mineral! Our weak, bosomy enargite became a bustling community of green stuff! That green stuff is named Olivenite. I'm not going to go into the chemistry behind it all. Knowledge may be power, but it's also really boring.

But behold! The magic doesn't stop there! Olivenite isn't long for this world either! Look at this table! LOOK AT THIS TABLE!!!



As you can see, all sorts of rocky spawn are created by the unearthly mating of olivenite and water! In addition to all them pretty minerals, arsenic and sulfur get released into the air and water and eventually into your liver! Ahhhh, geology.



And so, there we are. Enargite. Maybe not the most fascinating of minerals, but probably one of the minerals you would want to wash your hands after touching. If this blog post just isn't scratching your itch for enargite, you can always go find some for yourself at the Tintic mining district in Utah, or perhaps the Butte mining district in Montana. I'm not driving though.

Variscite - What does it mean to you?

Folks, today I guide you into the unknown. And by that, I mean I don't have a lot of information about today's mineral. What's worse, the mineral is so obscure that not a lot of books seem to care much about it. But if you read every post on this blog (and I don't recommend that you do, there's been some real stinkers in there) you will find that I never give a guarantee that the "information" imparted here-forth is technically correct. But it will be close, and that's good enough for me.

Anyway, forget everything you've ever known about anything, because things are about to get really existential in here. Today we visit the world of the phosphorus-bearing minerals. Now, there is bound to be a lot of resistance to this, and I can honestly understand why. I mean, it's not every day that someone comes up to you and says "Hey, I have a great idea, let's delve into the world of some crazy hydrous, alluminium-bearing phosphate mineral with a hardness of 4.5!" Of course, your first reaction will be to tell me to go back to whatever nerd-hut I've escaped from. Well, don't worry, I'm not going to get too out of bounds with this post, although it would be quite easy (and quite tempting) to do so.

Today's mineral is a playful, unassuming little feller named Variscite....





Here's what it looks like if you take a picture of it too closely with the flash on....




Anyway, go ahead and bask in the glory of that poorly-photographed mineral! Allow it to change your perceptions of geology! Like many, many other minerals we've looked at, Variscite is green (most of the time). My friends, this is just the beginning. Put those burritos back in the microwave, because I'm serving up a heaping pot of mineralological what-the-devil-is-going-on pie and cramming it down your throats!

As I said above, the Variscite is the green portions of that rock. I'm not sure what the white stuff is, and don't really care. I'm guessing you don't either. Let's look at some more pictures of the stuff so we can get a better handle on what is going on here....



Not too impressive. Just sort of a greenish-blob. But what if IT WERE ATTACKED BY INDIANA JONES IN AN AIRPLANE???



And also....A NAZI!!!



As long as I've already destroyed any sense of personal worth by revealing that not only have I purchased Lego toys but that I also enjoy playing with them, we might as well push it to the limit! Look out Indy!



Vrooom!!! Bang Bang Bang!!



Look at that! That Nazi is flying into my ceiling fan!!!



The Nazi crashed! USA! USA!



Dooo do do dooooooooo!!!





It is pretty hard to fly two Lego planes by using your roommates dog leashes and take pictures of it at the same time. So if that makes that last part any less stupid to you then so be it. Either way, it serves as good filler for an otherwise info-light post.

As I mentioned earlier, Variscite has a hardness of 4.5. This places it squarely between scratching it with an iron nail and with a steel knife. So, yeah, there's some information for you hardness weirdos out there.

Chemically, Variscite is made of one atom of aluminum, one atom of phosphorus, four atoms of oxygen, and then a couple of water molecules for a final chemical formula of ALPO4*H2O. If we mix a little math into this, we come up with a whopping 17.8% aluminum, 19.2% phosphorus, 60.76% oxygen and whatever is left gets stuffed full of hydrogen. That 60.76% oxygen seems weird to me, but I'm not here to criticize geology. Anyway, you mix those things together and you get a slightly green mineral....THAT IS BLOWING UP THE BERLIN WALL!!!





Nah, that's just more filler. What you get is a mineral that is slightly green, but isn't really capable of righting any of the worlds ills. But Vaiscite isn't always green. Like most minerals it shows up in a variety of colors. Well, mostly just green and red....



I've never seen any red Variscite, but I suppose it's possible. Also it is pretty rare that it shows up in crystals. Mostly the stuff sticks with massive blobs (called nodules) that are various shades of green....





Those are pieces from a place named Clay Canyon in Utah. Remember how I said that Variscite is somewhat obscure? Well, that's because it is also pretty rare. In fact, the state of Utah is pretty much the main producer of the stuff. It was for this reason (I'm suspecting) that it also goes by the name Utahlite. The material from Clay Canyon is pricey because the mine that used to be there was shut down when the State of Utah discovered that the gentleman mining it was somewhat lax when it came to safety, and would frequently light sticks of dynamite outside of the mine, run in, place the explosive in the hole and try to run back out again before getting variscite-ed. As a result, the mine was collapsed so the dude wouldn't kill himself, which tends to drive prices up for the existing material. I went there once and poked around the mine dump but I got a bunch of sap on my shoe and decided to leave. The other main place to get Variscite is located in one of the oft-forgotten corner of the state....



Not a lot of people find their way out to that part of Utah. And probably for good reason, as it has more crazies per square mile than most areas of the state. That area produces Variscite that has less cool shapes and patterns and is more just solid green. The piece from the first picture is from that corner of the state, so you can go look at that again if you are having a hard time picturing it. The nearest town to that particular deposit is Lucin, Utah (which is now a ghost town), and it was for this name that Variscite was also known as Lucinite. That's three names for the same mineral! That should help keep the confusion down.

So there we are. Variscite comes from Utah (and a little from other places). So what is it good for? Well, again, like everything else we've looked at, not a whole lot. We can make pretty things to adorn our women with it....





Variscite sometimes takes the place of turquoise (which is basically variscite but with a little copper mixed in) but it is a little bit softer so it scratches easier. Hey, do you guys remember scratch and sniff books? Do they still make those? I'm going to have to investigate this later. Anyway, it can also be confused with Chrysocolla, (a copper mineral that is chemically nothing like either mineral) that kinda has the same color.




So how did Utah end up with so much of the stuff and poor Iowa is left out in the cold? Well, apparently Iowa didn't have enough phosphate-rich water flowing around its aluminum-rich rocks! Utah, on the other hand, had more phosphate-water than it knew what to do with, and it was this water that reacted with the native limestone that contained some aluminum for some reason. Let's look at what I've just said in a much more confusing way....







Did that clear it up? Nah, it didn't for me either. Fun to draw though.

For you metaphysical types, it is said that Variscite can help you remember your past lives! That's a heck of a thing! So if you pick up a piece of Variscite and suddenly remember getting your bowels torn out for believing that the earth wasn't the center of the universe, that's why. Hey, if you aren't prepared to suddenly remember being racked with torment, then perhaps you aren't prepared to be a geologist.

And so we end our first phosphorus-bearing mineral. The phosphates (as minerals with phosphorus are called) are an interesting bunch, so perhaps we will see them again. You can never tell with geology.