My kid loves rocks so my dad gave this to him one day. He said he just found it on the ground. There aren’t any bits of stone in it and it’s all the same metallic material. He thought maybe some left over from a fabrication shop or something but I don’t know. Any guesses?
http://s73.photobucket.com/albums/i227/cvastag/?action=view¤t=HPIM0145.jpg
http://s73.photobucket.com/albums/i227/cvastag/?action=view¤t=HPIM0144.jpg
Coal slag can be shiny like that sometimes.
Interesting pieces of it are often found around railroad tracks.
Do you live anywhere near Roswell, NM?
It looks as if it might possibly be galena.
I’ve seen more coal slag than anyone else on this message board, and have collections of coal slag filling a room, and I think you could be correct. However, the photos are way too blurry for me to tell.
Are you sure it is metal? For instance, does it conduct electricity?
Is it flaky? Does it rub off easy? Could you mark it on something to leave a streak?
Does it kinda stink like rotten eggs?
I have two “rocks” that look much like the one in your pictures. I found them both when I was a kid. A while back I had a really good student who was a geology major, and I showed it to her. She suspected that it might be galena (like someone mentioned above), but wasn’t sure-it seemed too light.
So we went to the senior guy in the geology department, and he said that it is most likely a byproduct of some metallurgical process. Part of the giveaway was the presence of holes that go partway through the rock. Since I found it in Montgomery, AL, it’s possible that it’s a byproduct of the iron and steel industry in Birmingham, and somehow it wound up 90 miles south. Or it cold be a chunk of aluminum that somehow escaped the recycling plant.
Does a magnet stick to it?
Or Hanford, Washington, or possibly 3-Mile Island?
Or marcasite?
