Strata Gem

February 2004

 

The Presidents Message

 

We had 12 people at our meeting.  I was surprised to see that many with the fog and snow on the highways so bad.

 

We talked about out steak fry and we set the day up for August 21 at 5:00 PM in the afternoon.  No lunch will be served up there, as we will be doing crafts.

 

I filled out our Elected and Appointed officers in our paper, hope it is okay. We talked about changing our door prize, maybe getting a quilt or something. I made two cakes for the meeting, we enjoyed them while Don showed slides of old field trips.

 

Henry Chavez was the name called for the five dollars. Donna said she will bring the treats next time.

 

Thanks to everyone for supporting me this year. Love you all.

 

Good luck and Good health to everyone

 

Your President

Ruth Smith

 

From the Sick Corner

 

Raeldon Baudino broke his leg and was in the hospital, he is now in the Tooele Rest Home having therapy.

 

Tooele Gem And Mineral

Tooele Senior Citizens Center

January 12, 2004 7:30 PM.

 

The meeting was called to order by president Ruth Smith everyone was welcomed. The minutes of the last meeting was read and approved. The treasurer’s report was read and approved.

 

Raeldon Baudino fell and broke his leg, he was in the hospital in Salt Lake City but he has moved to the nursing home in Tooele he is doing well.

 

A date that we can have our steak fry was discussed, it was decided it will be on 21 August dinner will be at five PM. If you want to do crafts bring your own supplies, it was decided to rent the pavilion for Saturday only, this year the club will not rent trailer parking for the club members if you want to bring your trailer you will have to rent your own space.

 

We got a bunch of old slide pictures of club activities, Don did screen some of theme for us after the meeting. Don has some round magazines for slides but no projector if you know where we can get one let him know. Dennis needs a list of club officers. Henry Chavez won the door prize, but we had to give him an I.O.U. because the treasurer was absent. Donna Chavez will bring the treats for next month. The meeting was adjourned.

 

Minutes submitted by

Larry Wilson

Secretary

 

Letter from the editor

 

Sorry you haven’t heard from me in a while. Mom is though with this round of chemo & finally got the ok to head south so we are in Quartzsite now. Sure isn’t the same without all our friends down here. We should be back in Utah sometime in April.

 

I have the SCRIBE Editors' Symposium on January 31, maybe I will come home with some new ideas.

 

Sorry this issue is late, the doc told mom to get down south so she could start seeing her AZ doc ASAP & finally had time to work on the newsletter.

 

Dennis Chapman

 

Fire Agate How Do You Find The Fire?

 

Fire agate is a quartz-based rock with layers of iron ox­ide in chalcedony which results in iridescence. It occurs in nodules of milky or grayish translucent chalcedony. Sometimes it is found in botiyoidal growths in geodes and in chalcedony roses.

 

Fire agate appears as a dull, reddish brown layer, but when the surface layers are removed, the rainbow col­ors of iridescence are exposed. The fire is brought out by tumbling, trimming, and grinding off the outer layers to expose the iridescence. Polishing magnifies the fire.

 

To find the fire, remove the matrix, then tumble polish the stones. Tumbling removes the excess chalcedony. When polished, remove excess stone around the edges, then polish and set. Allow the stone to retain its irregu­lar shape and polish slowly, so you don’t go through the fire layers. The graceful natural shapes are superior to those cut to calibrated sizes, as the best fire doesn’t always fit a mold. To set it off, mount the fire agate in a custom-made gold or silver setting. Fire agates are most often found in Arizona, California, Idaho, and Mexico, among other locales.

 

Source: Grant County Beacon 5/03

Via Rock Chips 5/03

The Virtues of Aging

 

The virtues of aging include both the blessings that come to us as we grow older and what we have to offer that might be beneficial to others.

+ + + +

A joyous occasion is never quite as wonderful as when it becomes a memory.

+ + + +

Getting a second doctor’s opinion is kinda like switching slot machines.

+ + + +

When you’re pushing seventy, that’s exercise enough.

+ + + +

There aren’t many of the good old days left.

+ + + +

Go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.

+ + + +

We worry too much about something to live on -and too little about something to live for.

+ + + +

When it comes to giving, some people will stop at nothing.

+ + + +

Too many people spend their lives aging rather than maturing.

+ + + +

You are old when regrets take the place of dreams.

 

from Outcroppings 11/02

via Golden Spike News 12/02 & 1/03

DINOSAURS:

FACTS AND FICTION

 

WHEN DID THE FIRST DINOSAURS APPEAR ON EARTH?

The oldest dinosaur types are known from rocks in Argentina and Brazil and are about 230 million years old. The most primitive of these types, Eoraptor, was a small meat-eating dinosaur. Because Eoraptor’ s skeleton shows some advanced skeletal features, older dinosaurs may yet be found.

 

ARE ALL FOSSIL ANIMALS DINOSAURS?

No. Dinosaurs are a group of ancient reptiles that had a set of particular skeletal features. The hips, hind legs, and ankles were specialized and allowed the legs to move directly under the body, rather than extending out from the side of the body as in modern lizards. This arrangement enabled dinosaurs to bring their knees and ankles directly below their hips and provided the necessary attach­ments for very strong leg muscles. Dinosaur skeletons were well designed for supporting a large body, for standing erect (upright), and for running. The front legs were adapted for grasping prey, for supporting weight, or for walking and running. The skulls of dinosaurs were designed for maximum strength, for minimum weight, and (in some cases) for grasping, holding, or tearing at prey. These skeletal features separated dinosaurs from other ancient reptiles such as Dimetrodon, the plesiosaurs, and pterosaurs. Fossil mammals, like mammoths and “saber-toothed tigers” (e.g., Smilodon), also are often incorrectly called dinosaurs.

 

DID PEOPLE AND DINOSAURS LIVE AT THE SAME TIME?

No! After the dinosaurs died out, nearly 65 million years passed before people appeared on Earth. However, small mammals (including shrew-sized primates) were alive at the time of the dinosaurs. Many scientists who study dinosaurs (vertebrate paleontologists) now think that birds are direct descendants of one line of carnivorous dinosaurs, and some con­sider that they in fact represent modern living dinosaurs. This theory remains under discussion and shows that there is still much we don’t know about dinosaurs.

 

WHERE DID DINOSAURS LIVE?

Paleontologists now have evidence that dinosaurs lived on all of the continents. At the beginning of the age of dinosaurs (during the Triassic Period, about 230 million years ago) the continents we now know were arranged together as a single supercontinent called Pangea. During the 165 million years of dinosaur existence this supercontinent slowly broke apart. Its pieces then spread across the globe into a nearly modern arrangement by a process called plate tectonics. Volcanoes, earthquakes, mountain building, and sea-floor spreading are all part of plate tectonics, and this process still is actively changing our modern Earth.

 

DID ALL DINOSAURS LIVE TOGETHER, AND AT THE SAME TIME?

Dinosaur communities were separated by both time and geography. The “age of dinosaurs” (the Mesozoic Era) included three consecutive geo­logic time periods (the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Periods). Different dinosaur species lived during each of these three periods. For example, the Jurassic dinosaur Stegosaurus already had been ex­tinct for approximately 80 million years before the appearance of the Cretaceous dinosaur Tyrannosaurus. In fact, the time separating Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus is greater than the time separating Tyrannosaurus and you. At the beginning of dinosaur history (the Triassic Period), there was one supercontinent on Earth (Pangea). Many dinosaur types were widespread across it. However as Pangea broke apart, dinosaurs became scattered across the globe on separate conti­nents, and new types of dinosaurs evolved separately in each geographic area.

 

HOW ARE DINOSAURS NAMED?

Dinosaurs generally are named after a characteristic body feature, after the place where they were found, or after a person involved in the discovery. Usually the name consists of two Greek or Latin words (or combinations); in order, these are the genus (plural, genera) and the species name. For example, the Greek and Latin combination (binomen) Tyrannosaurus rex means “king of the tyrant lizards.” Biologists name modern animals exactly the same way. Some examples include humans (Homo sapiens), domestic dogs (Canis familiaris), golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos), box turtles (Terrapene carolina), and rattlesnakes (Crotalus horridus).

 

WERE DINOSAURS WARM-BLOODED?

Scientists have conflicting opinions on this subject. Some paleontologists think that all dinosaurs were “warm-blooded” in the same sense that modern birds and mammals are; that is, they had rapid metabolic rates. Other scientists think it unlikely that any dinosaur could have had a rapid metabolic rate. Some scientists think that very big dinosaurs could have had warm bodies because of their large body size, just as some sea turtles do today. It may be that some small dinosaurs were warm-blooded. The problem is that it is hard to find evidence that unquestionably shows what dinosaur metabolisms were like.

 

HOW LONG COULD A DINOSAUR LIVE?

Animal lifespan relate in part to their body size and in part to their type of metabolism. Dinosaur lifespan probably varied in length from tens of years to hundreds of years. Their possible maximum age can be estimated from the maximum lifespan of modern reptiles, such as the 66-year lifespan of the common (Alligator mississippiensis) and the impressive lifespan of a Black Seychelles Tortoise (Geochelone (Aldabrachelys) sumeirei). One specimen of this now extinct species, which was an adult when captured, lived a record 152 years in captivity (1766-1918) and had an accidental death. These estimates, based on lifespans of cold-blooded animals, would be too long if dinosaurs had metabolisms more similar to modern birds and mammals.

 

U.S.G.S publication of the same name. Authors: Ronald J. Litwin, Robert E. Weems, Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.

 

Via The Glacial Drifter Aug/Sep 2003

 

Earthquake Country

by Robert Beadle

 

The series of earthquakes in the winter of 1811-1812 in what we now call the New Madrid Seismic Zone produced some curious phenomena, which characterized these events. Phenomena such as waterfalls on the Mississippi River, sand volcanoes, and five towns lost forever.

 

Two waterfalls occurred on the Mississippi River during the greatest of shocks on February 7, 1812. One was ten miles south of New Madrid near island # 10, the other was one mile upstream from the town. These falls were described as having a vertical drop of about six feet. The fall near New Madrid capsized 28 boats with an almost total loss of life. The falls lasted days and they were probably created by uplift along secondary fault features. The waterfalls eventually eroded away leaving the river passable for traffic.

 

The term sand volcano has been used to describe soil features formed during the shocks that resemble small volcanoes. They are more properly known as sand blows and sand boils. Sand blows occur when liquefied sand explodes from the ground leaving a crater. These craters can be 20 feet deep with rims several feet high. During the great shocks, sand, along with other material, became airborne reaching heights of over 25 feet. To the untrained eye, such formations would resemble erupting volcanoes, especially at the height of the earthquakes. Sand boils occur when liquefied sand flows out from a vent or fissure spreading a blanket on the ground. This blanket can be hundreds of feet across from the vent. Boils are not violent like sand blows, but consist of a gentle boiling of liquefied sand. Sand boils can be active for up to a week after the quake. Both features remain connected with the water table and any shock will reactivate them.

 

Five towns were wiped off the map during that disaster although the three great shocks were spread out over a period of months allowing many people to evacuate their homes. Two towns were destroyed on the first day. The town of Big Prairie, Arkansas liquefied and sank but fortunately all the residents escaped. Little Prairie, Missouri experienced numerous sand blows with great fissures opening in the town. Around 11:00 AM the soils began to turn into quicksand and the village was flooded with groundwater. Like Big Prairie, Little Prairie sank too.

 

The residents of Little Prairie headed to New Madrid only to find it in ruins. Burned by numerous fires, New Madrid disappeared during a later quake when the ground slumped 15 - 20 feet and the river washed the town away. The town of Point Pleasant, Missouri was located on the Mississippi River. When the banks of the river collapsed no trace was left of the town. Again, residents had fled the town before it was destroyed. Fort Jefferson Kentucky was swept away by landslides from the last earthquake.

 

I hope this article will give you a greater comprehension of the worst series of earthquakes in American history. I also hope you realize we have not seen the last earthquake for the New Madrid Seismic Zone.

 

(Source: The Earthquake That Never Went Away, by Dr. David Stewart and Dr. Ray Knox.) From The Trilobite 12/00 via The pick and Dop Stick, and

 

reprinted from STONEY STATMENT 1/01

Via The Glacial Drifter 8/03

 

Life After Death

 

“Do you believe m life after death?" the boss asked one of his employees.

 

"Yes, Sir," the new employee replied.

 

"Well, then, that makes everything just fine" the boss went on. "After you left early yesterday to go to your grandmother’s funeral, she stopped in to see you.”

 

Via Gravel Gazette September 2002

Via Rock Chips 7/03

 

Only Five Kinds Of

Minerals Make 95% Of Earth’s Surface

by Chris Fite, TRMS

 

If you skimmed the upper three feet of earth off and analyzed the minerals in it, then you would discover that only five kinds of minerals make up at least 95% of the bulk of that mineral material:

·  Water, including ice.

·  Clays, including the “clay minerals” and the “clay size” particles.

·  Quartz, including chert and chalcedony.

·  Calcite, including its close relative dolomite.

·  Feldspar, including orthoclase, microcline, and plagioclase.

 

If you randomly went any place on earth (north pole, middle of ocean, desert, mountains, low lands any place), looked around you, then identified the minerals on the surface near you, then at least 90% of the time you would discover that at least 90% of the minerals (by volume or weight) are on that list of five super abundant substances, water-clay-quartz-calcite-feldspar!

 

The clay minerals include kaoline, smectite, chlorite, and illite. The other clay size minerals include about four oxides and hydroxides of either iron or aluminum such as hematite. Nearly all fo clay is found in dirt.

 

For example, in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area:

Stand on an outcrop of sandstone; it is made of quartz cemented together with either calcite, quartz, or clay. Stand in the Arkansas River; it is made of water and the sand is made of quartz.

 

Stand on a dirt yard; it is made of quartz and clay.

 

Stand on a limestone bluff overlooking the Arkansas River; it is made of calcite.

 

On the other hand, throughout the world, a small percentage of places are made of oddball substances. The Leucite Hills in California are made of Leucite. The great salt basin in Utah is made of halite. In volcanic areas with basalt on the surface, half of that is made of augite. Some mountains are almost completely made of hornblende. But oddities are a small minority compared to the super abundant substances, the giants of water, clay, quartz, calcite, and feldspar.

 

So remember, five kinds of minerals make at least 95% of the surface of the earth.

 

Via T-Town Rockhound 8/03

Hints

 

·   Is It a CZ, or diamond? If the stone is loose, turn it upside down on its table and slide it over a thin black line on a piece of paper. When looking straight down through a CZ, you will see a circle in the center of the stone. A diamond won't do this.

·   Is it citrine, or topaz? Clean the stone, then, using a toothpick, put a drop of water on the table of the stone. The water will form a high bubble on real topaz. On quartz, the water flattens out.

·   If you are cutting a star stone and are looking for the star, white Karo syrup works better than anything. A single drop on the stone, under a strong light, will show you where the star is.

·   And.... it was late one night when I ran out of the chemical ($23.00 per gallon wholesale) that I use in the ultrasonic bath to remove the investment from fresh castings. Believing something else had to work, I tried everything around the shop. If it weren't for the fact that I like cider vinegar on my sardines, I never would have found out that vinegar not only works, but it works better than the stuff I had. It also leaves gold castings almost shiney. It's also a lot less expensive.

Above all from from Don Ashbury via The Breccia, 2/02

 

The Three Z's

Just as butter, buttermilk and milk are three different things, so are zircon, zirconium and zirconia.

·   Zircon is a natural stone which can be faceted like a diamond.

·   Zirconium is a metal. During the nuclear accident in Pennsylvania the bubble allowed the temperature to rise so high that the Zirconium tubes in which the uranium pellets are contained I cracked and warped'.

·   Cubic Zirconia is the ultimate diamond stimulant now on the market.

 

Via Owyhee Gem, 11/01

Via The RockCollector 3/02

 

A Little About Lead

by Sam Maselli

 

Lead is not a popular element to write about. It is a lot like writing about fire because you can say many good things about it and many bad things. Man has used lead for such a long time because of two of its properties: it is heavy and it does not react chemically with a lot of things and slowly with many others.

 

Lead is used in chemical plants for some of the plumbing, as it resists acids and alkalis and the guy who installs it is often called a lead burner. It is used in the nuclear industry as shielding from radiation. Auto batteries are most often lead-acid and many other heavy-use, long-life, rechargeable batteries are too. Lead is also used as an outer coating for cables, an additive for glass and for paint pigments in paints that will not be used around the house (maybe bridges, etc.). The health problems caused by the ingestion of lead are anemia, colic, pals; it affects the kidneys and blood forming organs. Paralysis of the wrists and ankles is sometimes noted. The grinding and polishing of rock containing lead could put you at risk.

 

From The Tully 9 & 10/02

via ROCK BUSTER NEWS 2/03

Via T-Town Rockhound 8/03

(Continued on page #)

Fresh Dirt Fragrance

(From Discover.com 6/03 via BRECCIA 7/03)

 

Ahhhhhh! There is nothing quite like the smell of freshly turned soil. But what is it? It’s geosmin, or more precisely, t is a single gene (Sco6073) in the common bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor. [strepto means twisted chain] These minutiae were discovered by a microbial geneticist, Keith Chater, at the John Innes Center in England.

 

The turned-dirt odor might help the bacterium to survive in arid regions.

 

According to folklore, camels and other creatures are attracted to the smell of geosmin, which may tell them where to find water. The animals might then unwittingly spread the bacterium from one oasis to the next. Chater also knows how to disable the gene, which is a nuisance when pharmaceutical companies produce Streptomyces in large batches to make drugs.

 

Via Town Rockhound 11/03

Hints and Tips

 

To bring out the bright color of an otherwise drab slab of Brazilian agate, place the slab in a pan and cover with sand and put into the oven. Bring up the temperature to 550 degrees. Do this gradually over a two hour period of time. Hold it at 550 degrees for 1/2 hour and allow it to cool overnight. Do not open the oven while it is cooling or the slab may fracture. It is recommended to leave the oven door closed overnight, so that the slab will suffer no sudden change of temperature.

 

From Rock Chip Reporter via Golden Spike News.

 

To clean and shine most drusy specimens, use Easy Off oven cleaner. (Fume free is o.k.) Spray the specimen and leave it overnight in a plastic bag or dosed container. Then rinse. This works on iron stained quartz crystal.

 

From Breccia via Golden Spike News

Via Northside Gem and Hobby News 4/03

 

Polishing Talc

by Richard Chappell, Jr.

Houston Gem & Mineral Society

 

The natives of Brazil have used the talc found there to make common utensils such as cooking appliances. Professional talc carvers from Anapolis-Goles, Brazil, showed me this quick method when they visited Houston, Texas, in a nation-wide tour.

1.    CUT the talc into size desired with a hand saw (even the pros didn’t use any electric equipment except a lathe for hollowing out bowls and pots). Sometimes this step may be skipped if the piece is the correct size.

2.    CARVE the talc into approximate shape with a knife.

3.    SAND with 220 or 400 grit sandpaper.

4.    SMOOTH with quadruple zero (0000) steel wool, the finest available.

5.    HEAT in strong sunlight or warm oven until slightly warm to the touch.

6.    RUB with clear paste wax while the talc is still hot, and you have got yourself a finished carving.

 

Reasonably pure talc is required, but impurities give it a delightful marking or pattern. This method may be used for cabs, statues, or anything else. The finished product may surprise you, as you can t tell how it will turn out until the paste wax is on.

 

Source:  The Pegmatite Jan 2003, original source unknown

 

Via Quarry Quips 8/03

Interesting Tidbits

Alaska, The Fragmented Frontier

 

Alaska is not the usual solid chuck of continent. It may consist of at least fifty separate terrains or rock masses, many of which come from some other location. The only piece that may be an original part of the North American continent is a small area near the Canadian border, north of the Yukon River, but they are not sure even of that. David Stone of the ­University in Fairbanks says the state is a “garbage heap.

 

Alaska is an example of a relatively new concept in plate tectonics - that the edges of many continents are made up of blocks of foreign rocks that have been slapped against them by plate motions. With the acceptance of the theory of plate tectonics in the early 60’s, they began to understand how, in the jostle and rearranging of continents, pieces could be broken off one land mass and attached to another that was nearby. Scientists who scoffed at even short distance journeys by rock masses are now proposing an ‘exploding continent” in the ancient Pacific that scattered as pieces to every side.

 

Paleontologists have found fossilized remains of extinct single-celled organisms that are characteristic of Asia rather than North America. Paleomagnetic evidence in southwestern Alaska indicates that those rocks were formed further south - within 15 degrees of the equator, about 2,000 million years ago. The block would have had to travel as much as 9,000 kilometers to its present position in Alaska and British Columbia.

 

The 50 major terrains identified so far, range in size from one mile to several hundred miles square, and each is bounded by major faults, believed to be the structures along which the terrains moved. Some are clearly from the edges of some unknown continent, while the others formed from ocean crust. Most believe that continents grow as soft sediments and are scraped off the top of a plate as it plunges beneath a continent, like butter on a piece of bread. But. in Alaska the blocks are stacked side-by-side like plates in a dish drainer. They do not understand how this occurred

 

Author unknown, source The Mountain Gem, Q&MS of Franklin NC, July 2003

Via Quarry Quips 8/03