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When I was a kid, I had a very definite rock phase. It helped that I lived in an area that had a huge mineral scene - I remember going to shows where people would show off amethyst geodes twice the size of my head, people with little boxes full of carefully carved out fossils and stones that glowed bright yellow-green under a black light, all in a huge, brightly lit exhibition area that seemed to go on for miles.
I liked visiting the earths and mineral exhibits in museums, too - Iron Pyrite was a top favorite, because the samples were always as square as the museums could seem to lay hands on. Fool's gold looks fake as hell by default, but the most aggressively geometrical samples look especially man-made, even though they're totally not.
It doesn't count as a real rock, obviously, but fake caves you can go in explore are another best of for museum visits. In real caves, you have to be careful, because getting handsy with with "living" stone that's still slowly growing will mess them up, but artificial caves? You can touch as much as you want, guilt free.
Rooms that are dedicated to one or a very few massive stones, showcasing them in spotlights are great for their sheer sense of presentation, imagine being a huge chunk of rock, pulled out of the dark, to be placed like a set of crown jewels in a room who's sole purpose is to hold you, just so the thousands of people who come to admire you can properly appreciate just how amazing you really are.
Oddly, cut gems and jewelry exhibits have never had the same appeal to me. They're lovely, and the artistry that goes into them is stunning, but I think whenever I go to a museum, it's the raw, natural minerals that hold most of my fascination.
The sole exception to this would be amber, cut to highlight the little critters trapped within it, and probably other excavated and cleaned fossils. I've never been able to drop the money for a really good trilobite sample, but I've long wanted to.
On the subject of amber, I just recently learned they found half a gecko trapped in one of those things - You could see its eyes!
In terms of my favorite rocks to find in the wild, its a toss up between quarts and mica. Quarts has such a wide variety to it, you almost never get tired of collecting different chunks off the ground, but mica is shiny and, when it's scattered in tiny fragments throughout the earth, makes your dirt sparkle like you just spent several hours mixing glitter in it. In fact, I'm pretty sure mica is the substance you find in most high-end, sparkly makeup, because its so non-reactive to human skin.
I liked visiting the earths and mineral exhibits in museums, too - Iron Pyrite was a top favorite, because the samples were always as square as the museums could seem to lay hands on. Fool's gold looks fake as hell by default, but the most aggressively geometrical samples look especially man-made, even though they're totally not.
It doesn't count as a real rock, obviously, but fake caves you can go in explore are another best of for museum visits. In real caves, you have to be careful, because getting handsy with with "living" stone that's still slowly growing will mess them up, but artificial caves? You can touch as much as you want, guilt free.
Rooms that are dedicated to one or a very few massive stones, showcasing them in spotlights are great for their sheer sense of presentation, imagine being a huge chunk of rock, pulled out of the dark, to be placed like a set of crown jewels in a room who's sole purpose is to hold you, just so the thousands of people who come to admire you can properly appreciate just how amazing you really are.
Oddly, cut gems and jewelry exhibits have never had the same appeal to me. They're lovely, and the artistry that goes into them is stunning, but I think whenever I go to a museum, it's the raw, natural minerals that hold most of my fascination.
The sole exception to this would be amber, cut to highlight the little critters trapped within it, and probably other excavated and cleaned fossils. I've never been able to drop the money for a really good trilobite sample, but I've long wanted to.
On the subject of amber, I just recently learned they found half a gecko trapped in one of those things - You could see its eyes!
In terms of my favorite rocks to find in the wild, its a toss up between quarts and mica. Quarts has such a wide variety to it, you almost never get tired of collecting different chunks off the ground, but mica is shiny and, when it's scattered in tiny fragments throughout the earth, makes your dirt sparkle like you just spent several hours mixing glitter in it. In fact, I'm pretty sure mica is the substance you find in most high-end, sparkly makeup, because its so non-reactive to human skin.
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One of our neighbors was a rockhound. :D
>> It helped that I lived in an area that had a huge mineral scene - I remember going to shows where people would show off amethyst geodes twice the size of my head,<<
Biggest I've seen was about 4 feet tall but that was in Mexico. Same place had similar sized urns carved from malachite and lapis lazuli.
>> people with little boxes full of carefully carved out fossils and stones that glowed bright yellow-green under a black light, all in a huge, brightly lit exhibition area that seemed to go on for miles. <<
I love UV-reactive stuff. Nowadays yooperlite is popular and we've picked up several pieces.
>> I liked visiting the earths and mineral exhibits in museums, too <<
Agreed.
>> It doesn't count as a real rock, obviously, but fake caves you can go in explore are another best of for museum visits. In real caves, you have to be careful, because getting handsy with with "living" stone that's still slowly growing will mess them up, but artificial caves? You can touch as much as you want, guilt free. <<
I haven't seen that, but it sounds fun. I like walking through real caves. They usually have a touchstone near the entrance so people can feel what the rock is like, and be less tempted to mess with the live parts. If the cave is not wet and not home to bats, however, there's much less need to discourage touching.
>>Rooms that are dedicated to one or a very few massive stones<<
I've seen meteorites set out that way.
>> Oddly, cut gems and jewelry exhibits have never had the same appeal to me. They're lovely, and the artistry that goes into them is stunning, but I think whenever I go to a museum, it's the raw, natural minerals that hold most of my fascination. <<
I like them if they're carved into figurines; I've seen some stunning jade exhibits. But jewelry, I'm probably more interested in the gift shop.
>> The sole exception to this would be amber, cut to highlight the little critters trapped within it, and probably other excavated and cleaned fossils. <<
I love both amber and fossils.
>> I've never been able to drop the money for a really good trilobite sample, but I've long wanted to. <<
Same here. There's a crystal store we visit that has a fossil case, though. I'm watching to see what comes into my price range.
>> On the subject of amber, I just recently learned they found half a gecko trapped in one of those things - You could see its eyes! <<
Daaaamn.
>> In terms of my favorite rocks to find in the wild, its a toss up between quarts and mica. <<
A nursery we visit has a rockyard. So far I've bought several large cobbles for edging a flowerbed, two head-sized pieces of pink rock with copious mica inclusions, two slabs with worm trace fossils, and a slab with a fan-shaped fossil. :D
>> In fact, I'm pretty sure mica is the substance you find in most high-end, sparkly makeup, because its so non-reactive to human skin. <<
It is. However, you have to be careful that it is truly powdered, because if there's any flakiness left to it, then it can get itchy.
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I've never seen a touchstone in a live cave before, I don't think, but that may be either a regional thing, or a consequence of not having been in very many. I've been to two commercial caves and two wild ones, the most spectacular of which had an underground lake ringed by a tiny beach a hundred feet or so beneath the earth.
I double checked myself, and it's more like a third of a gecko. It's called Yantarogekko and you can check out pics on its wikipedia page here.
>>>It is. However, you have to be careful that it is truly powdered, because if there's any flakiness left to it, then it can get itchy.
I didn't know that - I'm not a makeup type myself, so I only knew about its use in cosmetics on the offhand. No wonder the good stuff is so expensive, grinding all that rock down so its too fine to itch sounds like a huge time sump.
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I've probably been in dozens, spanning roughly the western 2/3 of the continental US. When I was younger, my parents and I took a couple of long vacations traveling around, and I'd ask to go into any cave I saw advertised. I've only been in one wild cave, which was interesting but much less comfortable.
>> I double checked myself, and it's more like a third of a gecko. It's called Yantarogekko and you can check out pics on its wikipedia page here.<<
That is so cool! :D
I've got a couple of amber necklaces from Russia. I think a few of the nuggets have tiny inclusions.
>> I didn't know that - I'm not a makeup type myself, so I only knew about its use in cosmetics on the offhand. No wonder the good stuff is so expensive, grinding all that rock down so its too fine to itch sounds like a huge time sump. <<
I'm not much into makeup either, but I like sparkly things and I've done research on art supplies or homemade products. Yes, I suspect that milling mica that small is tedious. It should feel like moondust, almost like flour. But if you're touching mica embedded in a rock, be careful; it can give you paper cuts. The layers are very thin and brittle. Usually silvery, sometimes golden. Once I found a little chunk that was blue, like flaky glass.