Saturday, September 6, 2014

Geo 730: September 6, Day 614: Multicolored Quartz

Above is a fairly typical scene from a boulder that has weathered out of the quartz vein. The vein material itself is just massive quartz- there's very little to see that's of any interest, and very little hint as to the nature of the crystals. It occurs to me belatedly that it might actually be kind of interesting to see what a thin section of that material looks like under crossed polars. However, it's the void spaces in the breccia that hold little treasures. The colorful spot in the lower middle- above the salal and blackberry leaves- is an obvious example. A less obvious example is about halfway between the colorful vug and the hammer handle- less obvious because the crystals are the same milky white as the vein itself. Below are two crops from the full size photo.
 The lower vug.
The upper vug.

Photo unaltered. August 5, 2012. FlashEarth Location.

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