Rock Crystal
Colorless or Pure quartz is traditionally called rock crystal (sometimes called clear quartz), is colorless and transparent (clear) or translucent, and has often been used for hardstone carvings, such as the Lothair Crystal. It is also known as "Sphatik" in India. Common colored varieties include citrine, rose quartz, amethyst, smoky quartz, milky quartz, and others. Quartz goes by an array of different names.
Quartz is the second most common mineral found in the Earth's continental crust, after the mineral feldspar. It is made up of a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall formula SiO2 Silicon Dioxide.
There are different varieties of quartz, most of them are known as semi-precious gemstones. Especially in Europe and the Middle East, varieties of quartz have been since antiquity the most commonly used minerals in the making of jewelry and hardstone carvings.
The word "quartz" is believed to be derived from the German word "Quarz" and its Middle High German ancestor "twarc", which probably originated in Slavic (cf. Czech tvrdý ("hard"), Polish twardy ("hard")). Hence the name Quartz.
Colorless or Pure quartz is traditionally called rock crystal (sometimes called clear quartz), is colorless and transparent (clear) or translucent, and has often been used for hard stone carvings, such as the Lothair Crystal. It is also known as "Sphatik" in India. Common colored varieties include citrine, rose quartz, amethyst, smoky quartz, milky quartz, and others. Quartz goes by an array of different names. The most important distinction between types of quartz is that of macrocrystalline (individual crystals visible to the unaided eye) and the microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline varieties (aggregates of crystals visible only under high magnification). The cryptocrystalline varieties are either translucent or mostly opaque, while the transparent varieties tend to be macrocrystalline. Chalcedony is a cryptocrystalline form of silica consisting of fine intergrowths of both quartz, and its monoclinic polymorph moganite.Other opaque gemstone varieties of quartz, or mixed rocks including quartz, often including contrasting bands or patterns of color, are agate, sard, onyx, carnelian, heliotrope, and jasper.
Also known as Dur-e-najaf
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