Minerals, Rocks and Fossils
#1
I occaisionally try to pick up some neat pieces of earth. Here is a bunch of my better pieces-

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Modeling New Jersey Under the Wire 1978-1979.  
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#2
Neat stuff,

I always wanted to go to Arkansas to dig for diamonds. As a young kid I used to pick up rocks that looked like granite and quartz. Not sure what happened to those rocks may have been thrown out at some point.
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#3
Yeah, i wish i knew where to find this neat stuff. I've found a lot of seashells fossilized in the rock, but I've never found anything super amazing.

I have a little piece of diamond in one of those small boxes. I'd hate to say it, but I'd probably look right past something like that.

A side note, the celestite crystals in the back left corner are what make the color red in some fireworks. This is because of the element Strontium (the mineral itself is Strontium sulfate). Mine came from Ohio, but apparently, malaysian crystals are thick and blue, like a quartz cyrstal. I guess the shape depends on how it formed.

Either way, its neat stuff. I need to take an updated picture, since i realize i've got a few new pieces not pictured, Notobally a Pallasite (rare meteor type), and a chunk of coal from the Titanic (allegedly).
Modeling New Jersey Under the Wire 1978-1979.  
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#4
I have a new one for this thread....

Its a piece of vitrified desert sand from Trinity, New Mexico. Its only a little radioactive Wink

Its called "trinitite", created by the extreme heat of "The Gadget", the first ever Atomic Bomb in July of 1945. It had a certificate of authenticity, and I had some of it tested for good measure. Its the real deal.

These are somewhat difficult to come by, since the government didn't appreciate the public trespassing on their nuclear test sites for souvenirs. They made it illegal to collect these pieces of glassed earth, and covered it all over in dirt to make it impossible for people to collect any more of it. As such, there is only a limited supply of these out there in circulation.

Its a small piece, but its big enough to get a feel for it.
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#5
GEC - you may want to research Tektites - pretty cool!
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#6
nachoman Wrote:GEC - you may want to research Tektites - pretty cool!

I have one of those too! Its a piece of Moldavite from the Moldau river Valley in Bohemia, Czechoslovakia. It is pretty fascinating. Unlike my Trinitite, this tektite is green all the way through. Its reportedly about 15 million years old. Then again, a huge meteor like that may have hit with more force than an atomic bomb (or my trinitite probably isn't the greatest sample).

I should really take individual pics of this stuff.
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#7
A rock-hounding buddy of mine used to take metal detectors out into an area of public land that is known for iron meteorite fragments. Someone had given him the metal detector as a gift, and the first time he went out he found a softball sized meteorite within a few minutes. I was quite jealous! A few years later, he went out with another friend of ours to the same area, and hauled out a meteorite fragment that was somewhere around 80 lbs!!
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