Welcome to the Best Minerals Forums
The minerals have been divided up into different forms. All the minerals beginning with the letter A are placed in the A Best Minerals forum. The B minerals in the B forum and so on. Each mineral has its own thread in the forums. In a few cases, where the minerals are very common and they are known from very many localities, those minerals have their own forum. These minerals so far are Calcite, Barite, Fluorite, Gypsum and Quartz. For these "large" minerals, each country that produces notable calcite or quartz for example will have its own thread.
What we are trying to do.
The most commonly asked question about a mineral specimen is “What is this thing?” The application of mineralogy will usually provide the answer to this question. The next thing they/we want to know is “Is this thing any good?” The question can take many forms. “What is this specimen worth?” How good is it compared to others of its kind?” Can I get one like it or better? Those are the questions that we want to answer in this forum. No science, including mineralogy can provide us with answers because the answers are subjective. Many of us spend our lives trying to find the answers to these questions. The information is scattered though out the literature on minerals but is mostly in the heads of those of us who are interested in such things. Many of the people active on Mindat spend their lives handling, studying, digging and collecting minerals. In the process we handle large quantities of specimens, sometimes as a business, and in the process we naturally form ideas about the value and rarity of mineral specimens. There is no one place where one can go to find this information, but now there is the growing resource we know as Mindat.
Now, if we want to find out about how good a mineral specimen of dioptase is, we can go to Mindat and look at large numbers of dioptase specimens. Currently that is as about as good as you can get unless you want to spend a lifetime running around the world learning about such things. The purpose of this forum is to provide a means to capture the wisdom and knowledge of Mindat users about how good mineral specimens are and to put it in a convenient format that will be accessible and malleable to the needs of future generations. It is an endeavor very much like that of Wikipedia where everyone who wished to can contribute. This is not a one man show, all who contribute will be required to spend a lot of their time listening to the suggestions of other knowledgeable people and where it makes sense, change what they are writing here.
Scroll now to the bottom of this article and take a look at the article on the mineral Aluminium. This will give you a brief idea of what we are trying to do. Then come back and read about the ten questions we are trying to answer for each significant mineral at a locality.
1. What is the largest crystal of the mineral that the locality has produced?
2. What do the best specimens from this locality look like and where can one be seen?
3. Does the locality produce a variety of different kinds of specimens of this species, and what do the best of each type look like and how many of them were found etc.
4. How abundant are these specimens and when were they found? A type locality? In other words, how rare are they.
5. What are the associated minerals found on specimens from this locality.
6. How do they compare to other specimens of the same mineral from other localities?
7. How much is it worth. This should probably be optional, but in cases where specimens are worth thousands of dollars we should probably say something of the value of these things.
8. What kind of care and feeding do these specimens require? Are they delicate, radioactive, unstable, color changeable etc.?
9. Are the specimens commonly faked, and if so, how to tell if they are?
10. Are there any interesting stories relating to the collecting of these specimens or their discovery as a new mineral?
OK, so what is a significant mineral at a locality? We are not trying to describe all the minerals from every known locality, just the better ones. A general rule of thumb is that if someone has gone to the trouble of taking a picture of a specimen from a particular locality, it may be worth our efforts to include in Best Minerals. If a mineral comes from only one or a very few (<6) localities, even though we may not have a picture of it available, then we will probably want to describe all occurrences of that mineral. At the other end of the spectrum lies calcite. Mindat lists ~16,000 localities for calcite. In the Mindat calcite picture gallery however, there are only ~7500 pictures of calcite specimens representing those localities including many calcites from the same locality. In total there are only several hundred calcite localities represented and we may not want to write about them all. For those more valuable to society, science and collectors we will want to lavish more attention and or show more pictures. If we error in what we exclude or short change in our efforts, there is a very good chance that people who venerate calcite from a particular locality will let us know and we can modify or add to what we have written.
Format for the articles.
Invitation to help.
At the top of every article will be the following invitation:
Can you help make this a better article? What good localities have we missed? Can you supply pictures of better specimens than those we show here? Can you give us more and better information about the specimens from these localities? Can you supply better geological or historical information on these localities?
Introductory remarks about the mineral.
After the invitation and two line spaces down, in bold font is the name of the mineral, its chemical formula and crystal system. Example:
Quartz The name quartz will be linked with the mineral data page for quartz.
SiO2 trigonal
1 line space
Immediately below the line space will be an image of the mineral that is being written about. I would suggest an image of at least 600 pixels wide for this image, but we can vary it depending on the circumstances. This image should be captioned with the name of the species, any associated minerals, locality and size of the specimen. We do not need to put a detailed description of the species on the specimen nor its locality because the user can click on the caption or the image to see the full image in the Mindat galleries. We will definitely need to put the size of the specimen or the field of view in the image caption. Example: specimen is 2 cm tall or FOV 3mm. (FOV = field of view)
Line space
Below the picture after the line space will come our introductory remarks about the mineral. It should include remarks about how abundant the mineral is at various localities and what localities produce the best and or most abundant specimens and how large the crystals get from different localities. We may want to talk about when the specimens were found or historical information about the mineral in a general sense. The scope of what we can include here is quite large, but remember we will have any amount of space below to place information about the mineral at each significant locality where it is found. We will want to document what we say here with foot notes and who is writing the article. This is discussed more a bit later.
[Rock Currier, 2009]
Line space
Line space
Line space (Three line spaces total)
Species Bold font
Country Bold font
Locality (
Note, the locality will be the same locality that is present in the mindat locality database, but in reverse order)
Line space
Below the species/country/locality data block will come a picture or two pictures or more of a specimens from this locality. Where possible we should show a broad range of specimens from the locality and of course images of the best specimens that are available. In some cases there will be no pictures of the mineral at all so in that case in place of the pictures should be a note that no pictures of the species from that locality are available and we would solicit images of the species that we can put in the article. If the image(s) that are available, we must be careful to explain exactly what the viewer is looking at and which minerals are which. In such cases the captions may be quite long and if necessary a paragraph or so should be written below the image explaining just what the viewer is looking at. If there is more than one line of pictures between each line of pictures will come two line spaces. After the final picture or line of pictures will be another line space.
When we import these pictures to our articles, the copyright information for each image will automatically appear in the right hand portion of the caption line below each image (see below for how to import images and insert captions). If the specimen pictured, plainly shows associated minerals, we will need to put that information in the caption as well. Generally, the size of the images we want to use will be 400 pixels wide. This will allow us to place two of them side by side on a line. We can separate them a little by specifying (float=center) on the second image (see below for details). If the mineral we are describing is not one that lends itself to many good large specimens and we are showing pictures of a lot of micro crystals, I tend to lower the size of the pictures we use to 200 to 280 pixels each. This will allow three or four images per line and the size of the image automatically suggests to the user that they are looking at smaller specimens.
Sometimes because of associated minerals, a longer caption than can be accommodated in the standard caption line will be needed. In such cases we will write the caption on a separate line or lines of text below the picture and link the caption with the original image in the Mindat picture gallery. Whether the user clicks on the caption or the image, they will be shown the image in the Mindat gallery with the full and original caption and all the rest of the data about that image. When the images are small there is not much space in the caption line for descriptive information. The most important information in such cases is how big the mineral is that the viewer is looking at. If the field of view of the image is 2 millimeters we can put FOV 2mm. If because of associated minerals, a larger caption is needed, we can make the images larger to accommodate more caption information or put the caption line below the image.
The arrangement of the pictures in the picture sections of our articles is a bit of an art. In those instances where we want to show many images, their arrangement can be tedious. The technical format of the fields we are working in was not designed for photo manipulation. We can specify the width of the images we import into our articles or specify the height of the images, but not both. We can by decreasing the width of our images also reduce their height. We try to make all the images on the same line the same height. It makes them look a lot better that way. With a little practice however we can do an adequate job of showing pictures. I try to put the best pictures first and those of lesser quality (of image as well as specimen) in secondary positions. However, the persons who undertake to write the articles get to pick the pictures that are used and decide how prominent he wants to make them.
After the last picture will be another line space, and then the descriptive text talking about the specimens shown above. This is where the answers to the ten questions listed above will go. You do not need to answer all of those questions, but the more of them we can answer the stronger our articles will be. After talking about the specimens we can talk about the geology of the deposit and its history. We can also add links here to pictures of the locality. We can add those links here or put them directly after the pictures separated from them by a line space.
Doccumentation
It is important that we document what we are writing about and who is doing the writing. This can take the traditional form of foot notes as in normal scientific literature and these foot notes will be placed at the bottom of the various sections. If a footnote is added in the specimen information section, the footnotes should be placed below that section and if made in the locality description section then they should be placed immediately below. Furthermore, who ever writes that section should put their name and date at the end of the section like this.
[Rock Currier, 2009]. If the section is written in collaboration with someone(s) else, then both names should be included. Example:
[Rock Currier & Pavel Kartashov, 2009] You can put a more exact date if you wish.
More information about these articles.
The field we are working in are limited to about 60,000 characters and if the articles we are writing exceed that, we will need to break the article up into different threads like we have for the Azurite article. To keep within in the 60,000 character limit we broke the Bisbee and Tsumeb sections of the Azurite article and gave them their own individual threads. These forums may not be the eventual final home for what we are creating. The information about the various minerals and localities that we are placing here may be eventually moved, linked and or duplicated and placed in other sections of mindat that show the data about specific minerals or localities.
As we write this material we should keep in mind that it will not be exclusively for collectors or academics. It may be read by people who know little or nothing about minerals but are trying to find out if the specimen they have is worth anything. It may also be read by people interested in the material sciences that are trying to locate a source of raw materials for some experiment or device. Suppose you are a chemistry or physics guy and you find out that there is a mineral called acuminite that you think has the properties and structure that might fit perfectly with some project you are working on. You can read the Acuminite article forum and find out that it has been found only in mm size crystals in one specimen from a defunct locality and that if you want more you should probably head for the synthesis lab rather than start bothering museums or mineral dealers for “samples”.
Advice to those who would like to help with the project:
We will need many people to help with this project and if you are particularly knowledgeable about certain minerals or certain localities we hope you will step up and help with the project as much as you can. Those with enough interest in the project may eventually be made moderators and will help directing the contributions of others.
If you want to undertake the description of a particular mineral I can offer some advice. When starting I would suggest that you first pick a mineral to work on has say less than 15 or 20 "good" localities to describe and to initially avoid minerals like calcite or quartz. However, if there is a brave individuals out there who would like to step up and undertake getting started on these monsters we will welcome them. In addition to get started on a mineral I would suggest that you review all the pictures of the minerals you want to work with that are in the Mindat picture gallery. It is a great way to focus your mind on the reality (the beef) that you will be writing about. Next, unless you are the person who collected most of the specimens, characterized the mineral and wrote the article in the pier reviewed journal and have maintained an active interest in that mineral all your life, is to ground yourself with what other people have written about the mineral. The original scientific description is a good place to start if it is a rare mineral. If it is a common one, read the entries in some of the modern descriptive mineralogies. It may also be helpful to review some of the references that the authors have listed. Then read what has been written about the mineral in the various amateur magazines like the Mineralogical Record or Lapis. These often contain very good information about specimens from specific localities. If these magazines have a cumulative index of some sort, these can speed your search greatly for information about what you are looking for. While you are doing your reading, make notes of of the source for the various bits of information you may want to use. When possible, make notes on who the person was who collected most of the specimens, you may want to try and contact them and ask questions about the find. You will put a lot of this reference material into the footnotes for each article. Don't forget the net. There is a huge amount of information out there.
In selecting images for an article, I find it useful to use to keep a notepad handy. I use a virtual one on my computer screen. In it I place the locality strings and the image URLs of the images that I am considering for use in the article I am working on. When working with the Mindat image galleries I can quickly add localities and URLs by selecting them and then copying them to the pad using a few mouse clicks and then with a few more mouse clicks, place those localities and image urls into the articles.
How to link text in your articles to images in the Mindat photo galery and how to import images from the mindat photo galery so that they will appear in your articles.
These are two separate but related processes but not hard to master if you will follow these directions.
1. The best way to import images into mindat species/localities/thread postings.
When you want to import an image into what you are writing in a thread entry you will click on the little tourmaline icon just to the left of the smiley face on the tool bar. This will insert (pic id=XXXX width=600][/pic) into your text. You will need to replace the xxxx with the photo ID number of the image you want to import. The picture you can import here is limited to those already uploaded to mindat. Find the image in the mindat image galleries. The number of that image is just below and to the right of the image. You can select it, copy it to your clipboard and then paste it in place of the XXXX. You can control the size of the picture by adjusting the 600 number. If you want a smaller image, change the 600 to a smaller number like say 400. If you want a larger picture, type in a larger number (maximum width is 855). If you want the picture to be centered or the right you add the parameter float=center or float=right to the tag. To add the caption you do so by typing it between the brackets ][. Like ]Aluminium? SEM photomicrograph. [. However if the caption is a bit long, it will somewhat distort the frame around the image and you will then need to shorten the caption or add it as a separate line of text below the image. You can control the heights of the images you are importing by changing the word width to height and specifying the height in pixels. The default size is 600 pixels which of course you can change to control the width and or heights of your image. You must choose either the default width or change it to height. You can not use both at the same time.
2. Linking text to images.
In some cases like Image captions you will want to select that text and link it to an image in the Mindat gallery or to a document or other page somewhere in Mindat. To make this happen you will need to write a tiny bit of code which looks like this [ url=][ /url]. It won't look exactly like this because I have inserted an uneeded space before url= and /url which you will not do. Next you will need to type in the text between the brackets that you want to link to your text. In the case above, the code string will now look like this [ url=]one[ /url]. Next you will select from the Mindat photo gallery the image you want to link to your text. Click on the thumbnail image of the one you want and a large image of it will appear in a separate window. At the top of the window is a field that will contain the URL that you will need to insert into your code string to make the link. In the case above where "one is linked to that particular aluminum image, the URL is: http ://www.mindat.org/photo-191575.html. To make this url appear here in this form I had to add an extra space after the http. The final step to linking your text to the image is to insert the URL after the equal sign in the code string which will finally look like this: [ url=http://www.mindat.org/photo-191575.html]one[ /url], but without the extra space before url and /url. When you post your article or save the changes on a reedit of your article, you won't see the code at all, but only your selected text in blue. Clicking on the blue text will open the linked image, text or page.
There is an alternate way of importing an image into a thread field, but we discourage its use in the Best Minerals articles because it does not automatically import the copyright information into a caption field below the image. But here is how you do it.
When writing an article in a thread posting or editing one, place the cursor in the place you want the picture to appear. Then select the image you want to insert from Mindat's image galery and click on it to bring up the large size image. Then click on the large image and select the second menu choice. Copy image URL. This will coppy the URL of the image to the clipboard. This URL is
not quite the same URL that appears in the field at the top of the page with the large image that we used in the process above. Then go back to your article and click on the ninth icon from the right on the tool bar. This is the icon of a mountain with the sun above. When you click on this icon an Alert window will open and you will insert the URL you have copied to your clipboard into that field. If http:// appears more than once you will have to remove one of the copies. Then post your entry or click on the Save Changes button to post your entry and when you return to your posting in the thread, the image will appear in the body of the thread posting.
Sample Article: This one is about about Aluminium.
Here is what we have written so far about the mineral aluminum. It has already undergone many revisions as more information was called to the attention of the authors and may very well undergo further revisions.
Can you help make this a better article? What good localities have we missed? Can you supply pictures of better specimens than those we show here? Can you give us more and better information about the specimens from these localities? Can you supply better geological or historical information on these localities?
Aluminium rare species collections.
Al, Isometric. A native metallic element.
Aluminium has now been found in several localities in Russia and elsewhere. Probably the first reported find was, Oleinikov et.al who reported it from Siberian basalts.
1,3 It has also been reported in diatremes in Kazakhstan and a skarn deposit at Taror, Tajikistan. Also on Bula Island, Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan and in epithermal veins at Nikitovka Mercury deposit, Ukraine. One of the first reports of aluminium was on the moon. Initially there were many in Russia and elsewhere that felt that native aluminium was reported in error. Even the late and highly venerated Michael Fleischer commented “This seems extremely improbable from thermodynamic considerations.
2 Translating this from academic speak into the common vernacular it means “No fu----- way!” Dmitry Belakovsky of Moscow thought he had discovered native aluminium in some charoite samples he was working on. It turned out however that the aluminium was from the aluminium foil that the miners had used to wrap the explosives they were using when blasting the charoite out of the deposit. This and other reasons made it difficult for many researchers to believe that native aluminium had actually been discovered. Dmitry Belakovsky and Pavel Kartashov assure me however that specimens of aluminium really do exist.
1. Pavel Kartashov, personal communication 2. American Mineralogist, Vol. 65, p205, 1980. 3. Oleinikov B.V, Okrugin Av., Leskova N.V. (1978) Petrological significance of occurrences of native aluminium in basalts, - DAN SSSR, 243(1), pp. 191-194 (in Rus). [Rock Currier & Pavel Kartashov 20 December 2008]
Aluminium
Azerbaijan
Qobustan District, Caspian Sea, Bulla Island
 |
| © Peter Kohorst |
Pavel Kartashov thinks the best specimen of aluminium was/is a 5 cm 100 to 120 gm concretion that consisted of at least 50% native aluminium . It also contained magnetite, akdalaite, baryte, halite, AlCl3, sinjarite and clay. Only one such nodule was found. The expedition that was exploring the deposit was looking for native iron and did not expect to find native aluminium. The nodule was apparently collected because it was magnetic. It was later discovered that this was because of the significant magnetite component in the nodule. “Initially it was a very regular sphere with two flattened places on its poles. These circular places were light colored. So initially it was an almost black (or very dark-gray) ball with two white spots/dots about 1 cm in diameter. When the concretion was opened, it became visible, that it contained an axial zone very similar to a tangerine or orange section (this zone wasn’t a straight channel as a hole in a bead, but curved). The white material of the axial zone was magnetite free, and was composed of aluminium and “course”- tabular akdalaite, so it was really metallic-pearly white, very bright white. The complex structure of the concretion persuaded me most of all of its natural origin. I don’t see any technical mechanism that would permit its artificial formation.”
1 The aluminium in the nodule consisted of 1.5 to 2 mm blebs of polycrystalline aluminium and the aluminium content of the nodule was estimated to be about 50 gms. Pavel Kartashov says that it was a shame that the nodule was not photographed before work began on it because it was black and glassy and looked like a tangerine without its skin. It had a certain amount of halite in its structure and when the nodule was cut using water as a coolant, the halite content was lost and the color changed to gray and the nodule became porous. The remains of the main portion of the nodule is in the Fersman Museum in Moscow.
1 On Bula Island is a mud volcano. The island is (4x5 km size) in the Baku archipelago some km SE of Baku city. The main volcanic activity episodes were observed in 1857, 1859, 1940, 1947, 1959, 1960 and 1963. The strongest eruptions occurred in 1857 and 1940, when volumes of erupted breccias attained some millions of cubic meters and flame pillars were up to a kilometer high. The most interesting mineralization (native metals, akdalaite) is connected with ejecta of 1947 eruption.2 Some pieces of native iron up to 4 cm in diameter were recovered here but at least some investigators think they may not be of natural origin.
1
1. Pavel Kartashov, personal communication 2. Novgorodova M.I., Mamedov Yu.G. (1996) Native aluminium from mud volcano of Bulla island (Caspian sea). - Litologiya i poleznye iskopaemye, N4, 339-349 (in Russ.) 3.Personal communication from Pavel Kartashov 2009.
[Rock Currier & Pavel Kartashov 20 December 2008]
Aluminium
Russia
Southern Ural Mountains, Orenburg Oblast, Kurmak Deposit
A flattened nugget of native aluminium and lead, about 1 to 1. Specimen is about a cm wide.
Native aluminium has been found here in quartz veins. The Fersman Museum in Moscow has a specimen described as a 3 cm piece of gray white quartz with a thin sheet of “native aluminium” measuring about 5 mm across.
1 Pavel Kartashov notes that these specimens from Kurmak are not pure aluminium but mainly native lead mixed with tin, aluminium and gold in a quartz matrix. Some time the “ aluminium” is tin dominant but this is rare. The aluminium content can on occasion reach 50%. The “ aluminium” is part of a vein filling, and resemble rough flattened nuggets ranging from 5 to 20mm and .5 to 1mm thick. According to M.I. Novgorodova these “aluminium nuggets” can reach 2 cm though most are smaller. The thickness of the nuggets range from about .5 to 1mm. Probably the best thing written about the discovery of aluminium at this locality is in the book Native Metals by M.I. Novgorodova (1987) Znanie, Moscow, p. 48. Margarita Ivanovna describe history of discovery of Kumak aluminium much more complete and interesting than in any scientific article. There are currently some tens of specimens of “aluminium” from this deposit.
2
1. Dmitry Belakovsky, personal communication 2002. 2. Pavel Kartashov, personal communication 3. Novgorodova M.I. (1979) DAN SSSR, 248(4), pp. 965-968 (in Rus). kimberlites of Yakutia
[Rock Currier & Pavel Kartashov 22 October 2008]
Aluminum
Russia
Far-Eastern Region, Primosrkiy Kray, Khanaka Lake, Pavlovskoe REE-coal deposit
A few grains of native aluminium up to about 1mm have been found here in specimens from the deposit, but their total weight is thought not to exceed 50mg.
1
1. Pavel Kartashov, personal communication
[Rock Currier & Pavel Kartashov 22 October 2008]
Aluminium
Moon
Apollonius highlands Luna 20 site
From the 30 grams of lunar regolith that the Soviet moon mission returned to earth. containing aggregates up to 3 mm. I think this is the only native aluminium found on the moon and I wonder just how certain the describers of this mineral are that it is native to the moon and not perhaps an artifact created by the landing of the mission.
1,2
1. Pavel Kartashov, personal communication. 2. Ashikhmina N.A., Bogatikov O.A., Gorshkov A.I. (1979) DAN SSSR, 246(4), pp. 958-961 (in Rus).
[Rock Currier & Pavel Kartashov 20 December 2008]
Line Spacing
Note that there is always a line space before a picture. If there are two or more lines of pictures, there will be two line spaces between pictures. There is always a line space after the last picture and before any text. Where are two line spaces between localities. Take a look at the article on emerald and this will also give you an idea of what we are striving for when it comes to formatting.
Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.
Edited 97 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2009 11:43AM by Rock Currier.
