Microscopic View of Minerals

Appreciating Minute Details

- ALICE SIKORSKI

Once you start rockhounding, it doesn’t take long to fill up a few five-gallon buckets. You quickly find out that if you put lids on the buckets, the buckets easily stack up, three or four high. A lot depends on how heavy each bucket is and how high you can lift the buckets. If you’re lucky, a garage or shed is available for storing all of your treasures. Otherwise, the buckets decorate your backyard.

This is in keeping with the rockhounder’s mantra ‘You can never have too many rocks.’

However, there is another way to rock hound and it’s a method more than a few rockhounds are familiar. Think small – really small. Microscopes open a whole new world of rockhounding. A dull black rock can have clusters of microscopic yellow calcite crystals. The brown rock with a green smear is really round balls of conichalcite. How would you ever know unless you looked through a microscope?!

How do you find these minerals? It’s a matter of altering your post-rockhounding process.

When you bring rocks home after a day of rockhounding, the first thing you do is hose off all the dirt, right? Stop! Before you do, check each rock for surface minerals. A different color than the host rock is the first hint. A jeweler’s loupe or hand-held magnifying lens can help reveal the minerals.