My Sister and I are rock hounds and we both love gemstones in particular. She retired from head buyer at Hobby Lobby, which included a lot of World travel. She 'adopted' an extra Son in Turkey, who ran a yarn factory; who has come to visit her several times.
She read about some agate mined in Turkey that is reported to be stunning, so when he wanted to send her a present; she asked for some. He went to the grand Bazaar, and bought one for her; and because he knew I was fond of rocks too, one for me.
This is what he sent:
The flash on my camera is very close to natural sunlight, but it washed out some of the color saturation. The purple is significantly darker, like a high grade amethyst. So I decided to turn off the flash, and use room lighting to try to draw out the color. That's when things went crazy....
Like this:
This rock is dichromatic, showing two different colors under different light sources, in this case tungsten! This means this is crystalline, otherwise called a gemstone....
Since it is 9 inches in diameter, an over an inch thick; this is a significant piece of material!
I have no way of examining the crystal shape, so that won't help identify it. I will measure the refractive index, the mho Hardness, see if I can get any internal crystal angle information with my dicroscope; and test the spectrum with my spectroscope. The saturation is too dark to gain much from my microscope.
Anyone have any other non destructive tests I can do? If I cut off a piece, I could do specific gravity.
Without any other testing, this is a real possibility:
https://www.gia.edu/alexandrite
The colors look close on the rectangular stones here. If it turns out to be Alexandrite, it would be worth a fortune!
What a fun present! It will take me months of testing to I.D. this stone...if I'm lucky!
Looks amazing.
I was thrilled! I never expected color change, it would have been great anyway.
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Wish! What a gift, I'd adore it for a lifetime if I got such rare gem. it's lovely
It will be treasured for sure! It was a total surprise....
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An amazing surprise indeed. Have a lovely day
I only found the color change by trying to get a better picture. I wasn't looking for it....
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If you have access to a diamond tester that will give you an idea of the stones hardness which should help you narrow it down significantly. Not sure if there is a diy solution but the diamond tester just hits the stone with a super super high pitch frequency and “listens” to the reverberation as far as I know.
Thanks, I will test mho Hardness. I have a full lab for gemstones, so I will also test refractory index, and to see what the spectrometer says. I would need to cut off a piece to measure specific gravity, but that might be worth it.
Should be fun....
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