I’ve always been facinated by minerals and gems, but, having ADD made it hard for me to focus enough on names and such.
So… I have lots of rocks, pretty rocks, most of which I have no idea about what they really are.
These particular rocks were shiny, so they got to be part of my collection. This one, I dropped and saw what was inside and want to know more. The picture is the front, or the unbroken side, with the broken part, the smaller piece, next to it. Here is the other view, from the broken side.
I have another, similar rock, so I gave it a whack with a hammer and got this.
The first, broken one, is friable. Just rubbing it causes tiny bits to fall away. The other is more solid.
I know the pictures aren’t the best. They both have small quartz crystals here and there.
The outside color on the broken one is an irridescent red/purple, with small patches of greenish, almost moldy looking stuff. The inside is bright, shiny golden color.
The other one is shiny rust colored on the outside and bright silver inside. When I hit it with the hammer, there was a flash of odor, almost chemical. But it was gone so quickly I can’t really describe it any better.
They both have an odor, but not the same, and neither have the same smell as the flash smell.
Am I making sense?
I think the first might be copper. I’m only guessing because of the greenish spots.
The other I think is some manifestation of iron. Pyrite or hemitite maybe. These are just intuitive guesses, so don’t put too much stock in them.
The first makes me thing of schist… but it could be some other metamorphic rock type… seems to metamorphic, the spotty look is very likely to make it schist, gneiss or quartzite… Index mineral - Wikipedia tell you whether it is metamorphic.
Its got a lot of rust . Whats in un-corroded inside look like ? I Is it a sample or was it found as a unique bit inside some other material ? If its a meteorite it could be worth a lot. If its ore, then …stake a claim ?
But yeah its probably some sort of iron ore… Like this, 67% iron atoms, by weight. Iron Ore from the Mesabi Iron Range of Minnesota | Mark Steinmetz
The origin is pretty much unknown. I got both from a friend who got a barnful of unidentified rocks, I’m talking 700 five gallon buckets full, plus a pickup load of fossils and petrified wood. He got them from the wife of a collector who had died.
Nothing was labeled, much of it sat along the side of a barn where rain had drained off the metal room for decades.
I don’t know for sure if these were in the buckets outside or not, but my guess is the rust is from the barn roof, not the rock itself.
The second one is bright silver inside and seems to have an orientation. I chipped it in several places and found it to be dull gray running one direction, but perpendicularly was the bright silver color. The surface is very lumpy. It has small, node-like projections all over it’s surface. It has a bit of quartz too.
I’m likely wrong about it being or having any iron. I just tested it with a very strong magnet and neither one reacted.
So, not pyrite or hemitite or a valuable meteorite.
The other one, has quartz here and there, but the texture of the rest of the surface is consistant. Much more so than the other rock.
The color changes seem to be all on the surface, I’m guessing, from being exposed to the elements for 40 years. The green is definately exposure and the rest is a shimmery red/purple/golden. You cn see the golden color on the outside, but I didn’t realize it intil I looked closely at the edge of the break. It looks like it was cracked years ago, and the fall to the concrete floor did the rest.
They are both heavier than they look.
Also, I was mistaken about the the friabality, I was playing with several, similar rocks and got confused. The friable one is a mica and garnet, and what looks like, anthracite.
Not knowing the origin, even in just a regional sense, can make identification more difficult. It’s also much easier if you have it in your hand and can get a sense of the density, clevage, the basic physical properties, etc. So this is only a guess based on the picture but the first one reminded me a bit of what’s often called Peacock Ore, a popular name for colorful exampes of bonite or chalcopyrite and yes, it is a porphyry copper ore mineral. I’ve got a nice sample at home from a Utah copper mine but it’s found around the world, North and South American, Europe, Australia, etc.
Does this picture, with a quartz crystal association, look a little like yours?
Yes, that is an exact match to the the one that broke. The closest I can guess as to origin is the Pacific Northwest.
There are copper mines in British Columbia, about 100 miles from here.
The other piece, as I’ve looked closer, is very different. The interior is silver, and as I said earlier, seems to be oriented in one direction. I chipped a piece from the one end that showed a bright silver color, then a piece from the side which is dull gray, in the same color family.
I believe the reddish color on the outside is contaimination from water running off the metal roof of the barn.
It doesn’t respond to a strong magnet, so not iron.
Under a strong light, you can see the underlying color that’s tainted by the rust.
It’s heavy for it’s size.
It probably also comes from around here, as well.
The silver portion overlays a harder, muddy colored rock.
Sorry for my lack of proper nomenclature, as I said, I collect Pretty Rocks. I’m not sure why these prompted me to ask more questions, but, I do appreciate all the help.
