This video suffers from a lack of videos showing how the stones change color. It shows several still photos, but that really doesn't do justice, while a few videos would make it much better.
I have trouble, too, with this on Scishow. I understand that it's about plagiarism and the ability to get source material for all their info, but I do switch off or (like now) read the comments while listening.
True, it's interesting to *hear* about these colors, but it makes a lot more sense to SHOW us the colors. A lot of them sound really interesting and I'd love to get a look at what he's talking about, but this episode leaves almost all of it to the imagination. To be fair though, some of the examples Hank describes that I recognize are ones I've actually gone looking for to add to my mineral collection, and they can be extremely difficult to find examples of. They're often very rare, very small, ir very expensive, and often rare, small, AND expensive. While you might be able to scratch up a chemical match somewhere, it's likely to be the size of a sesame seed and due to the impurities, be totally opaque. The bigger, clearer ones that really show off their optical properties can be incredibly rare. (making them very hard to find, and when you do, impossible to afford!) Decent watermelon tourmaline is about the only one I recognize as affordable in a reasonable size and quality, but it also doesn't color-shift when you rotate it. But while that's a great excuse not to have one in my collection, you need to have them in the video if you're going to be listing them off. At least MOST of them anyway. We only got to see a few, and EVERY example shown was a picture. We want VIDEO of the color shifting in action! (or at leasts I do! that's why I watched this episode, and I'm very disappointed) If you scour youtube you can find a few decent example though. It's just rough hunting. Maybe someone can compile some links and add them here. Steve Vernon has made a good start in a comment just above mine here.
Alexandrite is my favorite mineral! I have a small piece of it I use when teaching people about lighting design, and I got that piece as a gift from a friend when doing my senior thesis on the psychological effects of different color temperatures of light. It's such a cool mineral, and I was excited to learn about these other ones, so thanks to SciShow!
This is really cool. I think the only thing that could have made it better is showing the same mineral getting lit from different angles to really demonstrate the color changes. Thanks for all the cool content you continue to unleash on the world.
here are some short YT links that actually SHOW Pleochroism: th-cam.com/video/rA1_XPzFgkg/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/W9fjfGXr-m8/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/Qny53VEDZ6M/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/AFVgOFURWko/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/M1JxZST-EVg/w-d-xo.html
Alexanderite and watermelon tourmalines are two of my most favorite minerals. Two more are Labradorite and monstone. Both are color changing, but I don't know if they're truly pliochroic or if the effect is caused by another property.
Same, and there are "alexandrite" (effect) glass figurines and beads! Iirc neodymium infused glass, gives purple and light blue depending on light conditions. I have been a fan since I as a kid was given a small glass mouse without them knowing they bought anything more than a mere normal glass mouse at the flea market. I do need to buy some actual alexandrite gems (and several others) some time in the future since the colours are different and so beautiful.
labradorite is an example of iridescent schiller (opals and agates are the same) and moonstone can display an opalescent schiller, so it is an optical phenomenon too, all of them are anisotropic (different properties are revealed in different directions - like oil spill on water or a CD disk surface), mother of pearls is opalescent and abalone is iridescent
@@davidherrera8748 oh yes, totally agree, it is highly unusual and beautiful, i must admit to be a little biased here - iridescent materials are one of the most unique and attractive things to me)
I have a specimen of florite that changes colors, as well as garnets that change colors in the same fashion as alexandrite. But my favorite piece, is a tourmaline that is polorized! With light behind it, it shows a wonderful pink, no matter what direction you view it from... But if you don some polorized glasses and rotate it 90°, it goes from that brilliant pink, to an intense purple! Ten winter's at the Tucson gem and mineral show, taught me a great deal, and I came away with one heck of a collection!
My ex-boyfriend's class ring was alexandrite. I really enjoyed wearing it and watching the colors change depending on the lighting. Giving it back when he moved away was a very sad day.
I work with minerals like these all the time (I make jewelry) and I didn't know all these scientific details. I just know what's pretty, haha! This was fascinating. I think one of my favorites would have to be the tourmalines, which have always fascinated and enchanted me with their many colors. I especially like the long, shaft like crystals that you sometimes see, with almost a stripey look to them, bands of color all through, but still translucent.
@@Justin_Bank I would hope they would bring in a geoscientist to host / research it if it were a full Crash Course, as opposed to just googling / wikisurfing like for sci-show.
Yeah. I’m at university studying to be a mineralogist (specializing in how minerals interact with light) and parts of this episode were painful to watch.
@@Justin_Bank I think if we keep pestering them they'll eventually do one. I've been watching since the original Crash Course: World History and they've gone through chemistry, physics, biology, philosophy, literature, three different histories, engineering, computer science, and even got to video games, but skipped Earth Science, so I'm a bit disappointed, as a geophysicist.
To be fair, explaining how electrons and photons work is not easy, but I think the parts that were attempted to be explained didn’t lend a strong understanding :/
My Mom wound up buying an old alexanderite ring at a pawnshop in the 80's that was listed as fairly big amethyst. You can imagine her surprise when she walked outside and it turned blue! I remember the jewelry appraisers face when Mom took it in so she could insure it to have it sized. I inherited it when she passed away, I want to get it sized but it doesn't ever leave my line of sight. It's one of the coolest stones and I would love to have more pieces but it's mostly mined out now
I have Alexandrite in my class ring bc it was Balfour’s stone for June. I love seeing the different colors, especially a teal green I’ll sometimes see in daylight or a purple hue in some indoor lighting set ups.
I have some alexandrite. It goes from deep blood red to dark green, sometimes it's aquamarine, and other times it's purple. It reminds me of a magic stone one might find in a fantasy novel. I love it!
@@MrGlennJohnsen opal has been sometimes found to form inside trees or shells of animals. How the silica gets in the trees and incorporated into the calcium shell is still up for debate
This is my new favourite episode! I love how everything was broken down and explained very clearly, there’s so much to cover when it comes to minerals. More rock and mineral episodes please!
Color Zoning can also be referred as Bicolored in terms of gemstones, where as Watermelon Tourmaline refers specifically to the green and pink variants of Tourmaline. Another big example of Bicolored (Color Zoning) would be Ametrine, where Amethyst and Citrine are displayed as a purple and yellow quartz crystal. Blue Amber is another interesting gemstone that is displayed as a blue light under sunlight, but an orangeish color under artificial light. One of my personal favorites.
I knew of Calcites, Alexandrite, and Tourmaline... But it was really interesting learning about the other minerals that can exhibit such an array of colors!
The Viking sunstone is indeed a historical mystery. There is no definitive proof of it being any particular mineral (they may even have used more than one), but two things are known. The first is that CALCITE (transparent, crystalline calcite known as iceland spar) works as a way to determine direction on a cloudy or foggy day when the sun's position in the sky is impossible to determine by just, y'know, looking at it. And there has been a large crystal of calcite found in a Norse shipwreck off the English coast. Tanzanite is my favorite of the pleochroic minerals. When I was in Tanzania, I visited TanzaniteONE, a major mining effort there that produces a LOT (possibly the majority) of the world's tanzanite...and I managed to procure a small crystal of UNCUT Tanzanite from a vendor in Zanzibar (those in the know are aware that uncut tanzanite is illegal to take out of Tanzania, however, my crystal was hastily incorporated into a necklace pendant, and as part of jewellery, the export of tanzanite is allowed). It is delightful, one of my personal favorite mineral specimens I own (and I own hundreds of pounds of rocks and minerals from all over the place, mostly collected by me). Tourmaline might be my all-time favorite mineral group though, because of its "garbage-can" status (i.e. you can chuck so many different elements into it, it accepts so many). I have some elbaite and schorl samples (I actually collected a pretty nice schorl myself in Bancroft, Ontario), and am always poking around looking for nice watermelon specimens at reasonable prices (haven't found a great one yet).
@@janicewiehe9936 I visited a LOT of places. The rose quartz quarry (in addition to the quartz, it had some really nice, massive crystals of pink potassium feldspar laced with dendritic pyrolusite), an old corundum mine, a site with these nice apatite crystals (some as large as 4-5 cm long) and biotite books, a cool granitic pegmatite that had quartz that was sometimes altered to smoky quartz by radioactive minerals in the rock, waste piles from a couple mines (one of which was where I recovered the schorl...plus this immense, like 3 pound piece of moderately-transparent quartz that has some serrated sides since it must have formed next to some large schorl crystals), and sometimes you could just stop on the roadside on the outskirts of Bancroft and find interesting things...like these crazy big augite crystals (the biggest I saw were about 4-5 centimeters across). I don't think I went to the sodalite mine though...some of the sites were closed when I was there (it was October, and not all of the private property was open to explore). I'd love to go back though, it's a pretty incredible place.
Yup, the Icelandic Spar from that shipwreck is mentioned here. A *much* more likely candidate for Norse Sun Stone... th-cam.com/video/eq9NE2qQzTo/w-d-xo.html
I’m so sad they didn’t mention Labradorite! It’s my absolute favorite. At most angles it just looks like a slightly greenish grey stone. But at just the right angles in sunlight (artificial light works too but not nearly as brightly) you’ll be able to see flashes of the BRIGHTEST and deepest blues, indigos, cyans, and evening yellows, oranges, and bright scarlet reds!! I highly recommend those who haven’t seen it before to go look it up!
My favorite mineral/ element is Bismuth. It is multicolored when cooled and creates the craziest crystalline pattern I've seen naturally. Another great one is peacock ore which is blue, purple, orange, and silver.
That cool cubic formation actually isn't natural, it's made synthetically. Although I get the confusion, cause when you look up "natural bismuth crystals" all you get is man made ones lol.
@@jasper3706 Multicolor, stepped crystal formation of bismuth is actually found in nature. It’s extremely rare since it takes extreme and uncommon conditions for this to occur. Otherwise bismuth looks kind of boring.
I think it might be specifically manufactured, but I always have an opalite pendant on because in natural or broad spectrum light, it appears to glow blue while otherwise being almost completely clear. It's a very cool crystal, highly recommended
Love this! I have a small selection of these beauties including tourmaline, tanzanite, andalusite, alexandrite and sapphire/ruby. Even a piece of sphene!
Brown being just a dark orange makes sense color wise for andalusite, and even tho crystals can show extremally different colors, it's colors being so close together, from the yellows, oranges, and browns kind of makes it more impressive and beautiful in my eyes, and it would make for a nice fall colored ring too!!
Was so excited to see my favourite mineral listed first. AL2O3 Second hardest mineral, only diamond is harder. The base mineral behind rubies and sapphires, though the video already covered that.
This was a great video! I'd definitely love to learn more about other cool things minerals can do, like the stuff about labradorite and opals that have been mentioned in the comments. :D
I have a tumbled verdelite tourmaline piece that has more bluish tinted green on one end, and yellow tinted green on the other with a light source behind it. It’s super cool✨
Corundum is given two names, Rubies are *exclusively* red, but it can be any shade. And Sapphires are any color *except* red. The only grey area is if corundum is a pink Sapphire or a pink Ruby. But that depends on if you're buying it selling.
Very informative, I love it! I think it would be even better if you showed people what you mean. It's not as difficult a concept when you have the stone in your hand and turn it. It how I learned💖💖💖
No love for beryl? Its different impurities also give it differing levels of pleochroism, and also different names (as with corundum): emerald, aquamarine, morganite, etc
I used to have an old hand carved silver ring with a large round stone in it that was always jet black except for about the first hour of sunlight when it became mildly translucent and a dark dark green. I have never been able to figure out what the stone was.
Minerals are great with their variety of physics, optical properties and chemical formulas, but rocks are their own kind of spectacular. Made out of various types of earth that's been broken off, ground up and has sedimented in rivers, they have a great variety of colors and structures. They come in different colors, including dark black, bright white or vivid colors, or they sparkle and shine from iron flakes or their structure, some are translucent and light up in back light, or they get mixed up giving rise to patches, stripes or spots. I collected a few cool ones, including one that looks organic, like a wizard's heart, dark blue with red "coronary" stripes and fatty tissue-looking patches.
Ah tourmaline, that's one of my favorite minerals. I like the face that when heated opposite electric charges are produced at the ends of the crystal. And the fact it looks amazing. I have a mineral collection. Some of the best samples I got are crocoite with its bright red needles and vanadinite with its browish red flat hexagons, also have a night large piece of dark purple fluorite. Oh man! I want to collect minerals again :D
Tanzanite the blue variety of zoisite also experiences trichroic properties as well. As the along the Z axis of the gem a red hue can be seen while rotating the blue to indigo gem can shift it from blue to gray.
I have andalusite and alexandrite rings, and a nice ring of opal with pink-sapphire accents, and I may have to find a sufficiently stunning tourmaline ring to add to my collection of amazing, eye-catching, color-changing gemstones.
I have an antique Alexandrite ring, and in direct sunlight, its Indigo, but if i move into a shadow, its green, and in artificial/low lighting, its red.
When I get married some time in the future, I really don't want to just head out and buy a diamond ring. Neither I nor my significant other will appreciate the flaunt, plus that's just too dull for us. I think we would both agree that something hand-crafted and one of a kind is much more valuable than anything from a jewelry shop. This video certainly gave me some ideas...
i have a small collection of transparent & translucent stones. i have no idea what any of them are, it was the "ooooh pretty!" reaction that inspired me to buy them. they all change color depending on what kind of light goes through them, what angle the light hits them, & which side of the stone you are looking at. i glued them to a window & i can see the color changes any time of day & go outside to see what colors they are from that angle. it's kind of like an escaped kaleidoscope on my window.
So, I play clarinet, and my favorite mouthpiece is a Pomarico crystal mouthpiece that changes color with the type of light it’s in, being more blueish outside and a reddish purple under stage lights. I’ve always wondered what it is, and now I know! It sounded similar to alexandrite, but the colors were wrong (blue rather than green). After some research, it sounds like a synthesized crystal where corundum is laced with vanadium.
Best example I've owned was a sapphire crystal. Bright light pure green across the crystal, fire engine red with a purple edging along it's length. It's only defect was size, it cut to .18 carat.
I bought my wife an Alexandrite engagement ring because it looks awesome and her birthday is in June. These stones are so cool looking, I'd love to have a fist sized chunk of each of them.
My engagement ring has a sizeable corundum in it. I found it was also really sensitive to the light around it. It was normally pink (people would ask what stone it was, I always asked them what colour, because on occasion it looked red), but in some light it was green. I'm not sure how much in the way of actual dichroism I got, because of the cut and mounting, but it was always a fascinating colour, and not always the same one.
You forgot to mention how rubies change color under pressure. They're used in DACs to measure pressures over 100GPa. Def the coolest crystal on the list 👌
This video suffers from a lack of videos showing how the stones change color. It shows several still photos, but that really doesn't do justice, while a few videos would make it much better.
I have trouble, too, with this on Scishow. I understand that it's about plagiarism and the ability to get source material for all their info, but I do switch off or (like now) read the comments while listening.
They would have to pay the licensing fees for the footage.
A video in a video, nice
True, it's interesting to *hear* about these colors, but it makes a lot more sense to SHOW us the colors. A lot of them sound really interesting and I'd love to get a look at what he's talking about, but this episode leaves almost all of it to the imagination. To be fair though, some of the examples Hank describes that I recognize are ones I've actually gone looking for to add to my mineral collection, and they can be extremely difficult to find examples of. They're often very rare, very small, ir very expensive, and often rare, small, AND expensive. While you might be able to scratch up a chemical match somewhere, it's likely to be the size of a sesame seed and due to the impurities, be totally opaque. The bigger, clearer ones that really show off their optical properties can be incredibly rare. (making them very hard to find, and when you do, impossible to afford!) Decent watermelon tourmaline is about the only one I recognize as affordable in a reasonable size and quality, but it also doesn't color-shift when you rotate it.
But while that's a great excuse not to have one in my collection, you need to have them in the video if you're going to be listing them off. At least MOST of them anyway. We only got to see a few, and EVERY example shown was a picture. We want VIDEO of the color shifting in action! (or at leasts I do! that's why I watched this episode, and I'm very disappointed) If you scour youtube you can find a few decent example though. It's just rough hunting. Maybe someone can compile some links and add them here. Steve Vernon has made a good start in a comment just above mine here.
That link to Cordierite loos great! (the others are pretty lame) But it's so hard to find good example videos... nice find!
Tourmaline is so funny to me because it’s just a mineral that happens to be sometimes pink and green and humans are like “:^0... is watermelon”
Have you seen some of them? They have the same order of color and even contain the “rind” sometimes.
It also shows up as black tourmaline, looks great in clear or white quartz!!
Alexandrite is my favorite mineral! I have a small piece of it I use when teaching people about lighting design, and I got that piece as a gift from a friend when doing my senior thesis on the psychological effects of different color temperatures of light. It's such a cool mineral, and I was excited to learn about these other ones, so thanks to SciShow!
Time to play scrabble. This episode just laid down a ton of triple word scores.
Ray Martin Absolutely!
Underated comment
Kinda sus
You should do a video on the top deadly rocks.
Stuff like cinnabar, arsenopyrite, stibnite and so on.
If I had to use one word to describe my feelings about pleochroism I’d say it’s Gneiss
That's clever, friend
Oh, schist!
Get outta here with that schist.
Gneiss!
With that joke... your slated for greatness 😂
I’ll see myself out...
This is really cool. I think the only thing that could have made it better is showing the same mineral getting lit from different angles to really demonstrate the color changes. Thanks for all the cool content you continue to unleash on the world.
here are some short YT links that actually SHOW Pleochroism:
th-cam.com/video/rA1_XPzFgkg/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/W9fjfGXr-m8/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/Qny53VEDZ6M/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/AFVgOFURWko/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/M1JxZST-EVg/w-d-xo.html
Alexanderite and watermelon tourmalines are two of my most favorite minerals.
Two more are Labradorite and monstone. Both are color changing, but I don't know if they're truly pliochroic or if the effect is caused by another property.
Same, and there are "alexandrite" (effect) glass figurines and beads! Iirc neodymium infused glass, gives purple and light blue depending on light conditions. I have been a fan since I as a kid was given a small glass mouse without them knowing they bought anything more than a mere normal glass mouse at the flea market. I do need to buy some actual alexandrite gems (and several others) some time in the future since the colours are different and so beautiful.
labradorite is an example of iridescent schiller (opals and agates are the same) and moonstone can display an opalescent schiller, so it is an optical phenomenon too, all of them are anisotropic (different properties are revealed in different directions - like oil spill on water or a CD disk surface), mother of pearls is opalescent and abalone is iridescent
@@AstaMuratti thanks so much labradorite is one of my fav stones
@@davidherrera8748 oh yes, totally agree, it is highly unusual and beautiful, i must admit to be a little biased here - iridescent materials are one of the most unique and attractive things to me)
Alexandrite WAS my favourite stone, till I got to mine black opal. NB a lot of fake Alexandrite is synthetic sapphire.
Don't think I'll ever get enough of Hank nerding out about random things, you make my day every time!
I have a specimen of florite that changes colors, as well as garnets that change colors in the same fashion as alexandrite. But my favorite piece, is a tourmaline that is polorized! With light behind it, it shows a wonderful pink, no matter what direction you view it from... But if you don some polorized glasses and rotate it 90°, it goes from that brilliant pink, to an intense purple!
Ten winter's at the Tucson gem and mineral show, taught me a great deal, and I came away with one heck of a collection!
Alexandrite is completely mined out. Alexandrite prices are very high. Beware of counterfeits.
The is still some coming from Brazil, but in very limited supply, and nowhere near the quality of what came out of the Ural's.
My ex-boyfriend's class ring was alexandrite. I really enjoyed wearing it and watching the colors change depending on the lighting. Giving it back when he moved away was a very sad day.
@@calichef1962 You were sad about losing the ring, but not about your boyfriend moving away? Heartless. ;)
Damn Satan... Burn.
@@csweezey18 🔥🔥oof🔥🔥
I work with minerals like these all the time (I make jewelry) and I didn't know all these scientific details. I just know what's pretty, haha! This was fascinating.
I think one of my favorites would have to be the tourmalines, which have always fascinated and enchanted me with their many colors. I especially like the long, shaft like crystals that you sometimes see, with almost a stripey look to them, bands of color all through, but still translucent.
No mention of Tanzanite? A delightful trichroic version of zoisite. Blue>Purple>Red flash
fishercat , that’s my all-time favorite gemstone.
+
4:02- Man, that's some gneiss schist there.
👏👏👏
I have a ring made with mystic fire topaz, depending on the angle, it goes from teal to purple. I love it!
This episode is a real gem.
Nah, you are.
Can we have Crash Course: Geology yet?
There was a lot that was misleading in this episode... I hope if they do crash course geology they can do better.
@@Justin_Bank I would hope they would bring in a geoscientist to host / research it if it were a full Crash Course, as opposed to just googling / wikisurfing like for sci-show.
Yeah. I’m at university studying to be a mineralogist (specializing in how minerals interact with light) and parts of this episode were painful to watch.
@@Justin_Bank I think if we keep pestering them they'll eventually do one. I've been watching since the original Crash Course: World History and they've gone through chemistry, physics, biology, philosophy, literature, three different histories, engineering, computer science, and even got to video games, but skipped Earth Science, so I'm a bit disappointed, as a geophysicist.
To be fair, explaining how electrons and photons work is not easy, but I think the parts that were attempted to be explained didn’t lend a strong understanding :/
My husband pointed out the missed opportunity of the background being the same color throughout the entire episode. 🌈
To be fair, we only saw it from one angle.
Petition for hank to say these mineral names in his journey to the micro cosmos voice
My Mom wound up buying an old alexanderite ring at a pawnshop in the 80's that was listed as fairly big amethyst. You can imagine her surprise when she walked outside and it turned blue! I remember the jewelry appraisers face when Mom took it in so she could insure it to have it sized. I inherited it when she passed away, I want to get it sized but it doesn't ever leave my line of sight. It's one of the coolest stones and I would love to have more pieces but it's mostly mined out now
1:33, the real reason Blue Diamond wanted Ruby shattered.
Such colorful language this episode...I really appreciate hue for teaching me so much! This was a real gem.
Buh da doosh
You basalt my sensibilities.
I have Alexandrite in my class ring bc it was Balfour’s stone for June. I love seeing the different colors, especially a teal green I’ll sometimes see in daylight or a purple hue in some indoor lighting set ups.
I have some alexandrite. It goes from deep blood red to dark green, sometimes it's aquamarine, and other times it's purple. It reminds me of a magic stone one might find in a fantasy novel. I love it!
3:44 Flashing the formula for cordierite gave me flashbacks to my mineralogy class.
James F always a good day when you have flashbacks to mineralogy class 😎 ah, those were good times
@@Justin_Bank ...so long,
& thanks for all the *flashbacks!*
Shame opal is a Mineraloid not a mineral i guess.
Another good word for you right there.
I was wondering why opal didn’t feature, it’s as close to magic as we can get in "stones".
@@MrGlennJohnsen opal has been sometimes found to form inside trees or shells of animals.
How the silica gets in the trees and incorporated into the calcium shell is still up for debate
Opal displays multiple colors through different properties. It would be worth a video of its own.
@@evilsharkey8954...it would hafta be
a *watered* down vid, tho... '°'
Favorite Mustard, you’re fired.
I don't know if it's pleochroic, but bismuth crystals look real nice
That was my first thought too!!
Except bismuth is a metal (my favorite one as well)
This is my new favourite episode! I love how everything was broken down and explained very clearly, there’s so much to cover when it comes to minerals. More rock and mineral episodes please!
Color Zoning can also be referred as Bicolored in terms of gemstones, where as Watermelon Tourmaline refers specifically to the green and pink variants of Tourmaline. Another big example of Bicolored (Color Zoning) would be Ametrine, where Amethyst and Citrine are displayed as a purple and yellow quartz crystal.
Blue Amber is another interesting gemstone that is displayed as a blue light under sunlight, but an orangeish color under artificial light. One of my personal favorites.
I knew of Calcites, Alexandrite, and Tourmaline... But it was really interesting learning about the other minerals that can exhibit such an array of colors!
I came for the alexandrite...I fell in love with it after studying it a few months back...thanks for the video...Loved it
The Viking sunstone is indeed a historical mystery. There is no definitive proof of it being any particular mineral (they may even have used more than one), but two things are known. The first is that CALCITE (transparent, crystalline calcite known as iceland spar) works as a way to determine direction on a cloudy or foggy day when the sun's position in the sky is impossible to determine by just, y'know, looking at it. And there has been a large crystal of calcite found in a Norse shipwreck off the English coast.
Tanzanite is my favorite of the pleochroic minerals. When I was in Tanzania, I visited TanzaniteONE, a major mining effort there that produces a LOT (possibly the majority) of the world's tanzanite...and I managed to procure a small crystal of UNCUT Tanzanite from a vendor in Zanzibar (those in the know are aware that uncut tanzanite is illegal to take out of Tanzania, however, my crystal was hastily incorporated into a necklace pendant, and as part of jewellery, the export of tanzanite is allowed). It is delightful, one of my personal favorite mineral specimens I own (and I own hundreds of pounds of rocks and minerals from all over the place, mostly collected by me). Tourmaline might be my all-time favorite mineral group though, because of its "garbage-can" status (i.e. you can chuck so many different elements into it, it accepts so many). I have some elbaite and schorl samples (I actually collected a pretty nice schorl myself in Bancroft, Ontario), and am always poking around looking for nice watermelon specimens at reasonable prices (haven't found a great one yet).
Volcanoman Bancroft is one of my favourite places. Have you been to the princess sodalite mine? Lots of cool minerals etc. there. ☮️
@@janicewiehe9936 I visited a LOT of places. The rose quartz quarry (in addition to the quartz, it had some really nice, massive crystals of pink potassium feldspar laced with dendritic pyrolusite), an old corundum mine, a site with these nice apatite crystals (some as large as 4-5 cm long) and biotite books, a cool granitic pegmatite that had quartz that was sometimes altered to smoky quartz by radioactive minerals in the rock, waste piles from a couple mines (one of which was where I recovered the schorl...plus this immense, like 3 pound piece of moderately-transparent quartz that has some serrated sides since it must have formed next to some large schorl crystals), and sometimes you could just stop on the roadside on the outskirts of Bancroft and find interesting things...like these crazy big augite crystals (the biggest I saw were about 4-5 centimeters across). I don't think I went to the sodalite mine though...some of the sites were closed when I was there (it was October, and not all of the private property was open to explore). I'd love to go back though, it's a pretty incredible place.
Yup, the Icelandic Spar from that shipwreck is mentioned here. A *much* more likely candidate for Norse Sun Stone...
th-cam.com/video/eq9NE2qQzTo/w-d-xo.html
I’m so sad they didn’t mention Labradorite! It’s my absolute favorite. At most angles it just looks like a slightly greenish grey stone. But at just the right angles in sunlight (artificial light works too but not nearly as brightly) you’ll be able to see flashes of the BRIGHTEST and deepest blues, indigos, cyans, and evening yellows, oranges, and bright scarlet reds!! I highly recommend those who haven’t seen it before to go look it up!
My favorite mineral/ element is Bismuth. It is multicolored when cooled and creates the craziest crystalline pattern I've seen naturally. Another great one is peacock ore which is blue, purple, orange, and silver.
That cool cubic formation actually isn't natural, it's made synthetically. Although I get the confusion, cause when you look up "natural bismuth crystals" all you get is man made ones lol.
The peacock ore is a thin layer of Bornite on the surface of Chalcopyrite. The thin film is the same reason you get the colors as with bismuth oxides.
@@jasper3706
Multicolor, stepped crystal formation of bismuth is actually found in nature. It’s extremely rare since it takes extreme and uncommon conditions for this to occur.
Otherwise bismuth looks kind of boring.
I've been fascinated by tourmaline for years now, particularly gem-quality pink tourmaline. I find it incredibly beautiful 😊
I think it might be specifically manufactured, but I always have an opalite pendant on because in natural or broad spectrum light, it appears to glow blue while otherwise being almost completely clear. It's a very cool crystal, highly recommended
Tourmaline would be a perfect name for a fusion of Obsidian, Bismuth, Lapis, and Peridot. Maybe Connie too?
No
Lil Pizzy why?
@@alexiswelsh5821 I mean black + rainbow + blue + green doesn't make green + pink
Hoe Hunter that’s only watermelon tourmaline. Tourmaline can come in many different colors.
Corundum and garnet are two of my favorite minerals for their amazing range of colors and color-changing properties.
Yes..Colour-change Garnets are amazing... and rare.
Love this! I have a small selection of these beauties including tourmaline, tanzanite, andalusite, alexandrite and sapphire/ruby. Even a piece of sphene!
Brown being just a dark orange makes sense color wise for andalusite, and even tho crystals can show extremally different colors, it's colors being so close together, from the yellows, oranges, and browns kind of makes it more impressive and beautiful in my eyes, and it would make for a nice fall colored ring too!!
SciShow + colors?? Oh heck yes!!! ♥️🧡💛💚💙💜
Was so excited to see my favourite mineral listed first. AL2O3 Second hardest mineral, only diamond is harder. The base mineral behind rubies and sapphires, though the video already covered that.
This was a great video! I'd definitely love to learn more about other cool things minerals can do, like the stuff about labradorite and opals that have been mentioned in the comments. :D
Oh I love you guys. I collect minerals and unique stones and this really helped me! Thank you SciFi.
They're not rocks, they're *minerals.*
hank ~schrader~ approves and likes this comment
You minerals my world
Giant heaps of crystals are rocks. If you got a big crystal, it's a rock too.
Goddamnit, Marie.
We, are Crystal minerals! And were here to save the day!
This episode was full of great words and a lot of gniess schist!!!
This episode made me so so happy
May I suggest a future episode about sheep?
Because they're awesome.
Excellent. Informative and engaging.
I really like these longform scishows. Give me the esoterics :)
I have a tumbled verdelite tourmaline piece that has more bluish tinted green on one end, and yellow tinted green on the other with a light source behind it. It’s super cool✨
YES! Another video with hank instead of the boring ones
Corundum is given two names, Rubies are *exclusively* red, but it can be any shade. And Sapphires are any color *except* red. The only grey area is if corundum is a pink Sapphire or a pink Ruby. But that depends on if you're buying it selling.
Only a chromium emerald is an emerald and everything else is green beryl.
Very informative, I love it! I think it would be even better if you showed people what you mean. It's not as difficult a concept when you have the stone in your hand and turn it. It how I learned💖💖💖
The episode ROCKS!
I'll see myself out.
Tiger's Eye Quartz is my personal favorite.
Material science is crazy. I haven't had much experience in minerals, so this was delightful!
4:48 I love the edit -" This Makes Sense Too ! ". Hahah
I LOVE YOUR GEOLOGY EPISODES
Loved this episode!
No love for beryl? Its different impurities also give it differing levels of pleochroism, and also different names (as with corundum): emerald, aquamarine, morganite, etc
What a colorful video. Really changed my preception of minerals.
There are some incredibly cool crystals that are fluorescent under UV light.
Wow this was really in-depth.
Alexandrite is my favorite gemstone, and it is my birthstone.
I used to have an old hand carved silver ring with a large round stone in it that was always jet black except for about the first hour of sunlight when it became mildly translucent and a dark dark green. I have never been able to figure out what the stone was.
I love minerals!!! Great video!
My high school class ring has lab-created Starburst Alexandrite. I love it.
Minerals are great with their variety of physics, optical properties and chemical formulas, but rocks are their own kind of spectacular. Made out of various types of earth that's been broken off, ground up and has sedimented in rivers, they have a great variety of colors and structures. They come in different colors, including dark black, bright white or vivid colors, or they sparkle and shine from iron flakes or their structure, some are translucent and light up in back light, or they get mixed up giving rise to patches, stripes or spots. I collected a few cool ones, including one that looks organic, like a wizard's heart, dark blue with red "coronary" stripes and fatty tissue-looking patches.
Ah tourmaline, that's one of my favorite minerals. I like the face that when heated opposite electric charges are produced at the ends of the crystal. And the fact it looks amazing.
I have a mineral collection. Some of the best samples I got are crocoite with its bright red needles and vanadinite with its browish red flat hexagons, also have a night large piece of dark purple fluorite. Oh man! I want to collect minerals again :D
this is a great refresher for going back to school :)
Very informative video thank you
When you find a good looking mineral
"Gneiss"
When it is spectacular you say Gniess Schist!
Cordierite would make a great character in Steven Universe. She could be a navigator.
Don’t like the show, but that sounds beyond cool
My favorite multi-color/ color change mineral is Mystic Topaz, it's also called Rainbow Topaz.
Have watched your channel before, but this one got me to hit subscribe.
He is such an amazing narrator.
Tanzanite the blue variety of zoisite also experiences trichroic properties as well.
As the along the Z axis of the gem a red hue can be seen while rotating the blue to indigo gem can shift it from blue to gray.
Spectrolite has all the colors of the spectrum. You really should look in to it.
Great video
Bismuth! Pl
PLEASE do something on this incredible stuff!
Here to get my dose of scigasm
Im no stone expert. But im pretty fascinated with Bismuth crystals
You can grow these, right?
...yeahhhh... from Pepto.
(not 2 be confused w/FORDITE)
Bismuth isn't a mineral though.it's a metal
These are all very good!
I have andalusite and alexandrite rings, and a nice ring of opal with pink-sapphire accents, and I may have to find a sufficiently stunning tourmaline ring to add to my collection of amazing, eye-catching, color-changing gemstones.
before the modern day, all of this seemed like magic, and honestly. Were they wrong?
I have an antique Alexandrite ring, and in direct sunlight, its Indigo, but if i move into a shadow, its green, and in artificial/low lighting, its red.
When I get married some time in the future, I really don't want to just head out and buy a diamond ring. Neither I nor my significant other will appreciate the flaunt, plus that's just too dull for us. I think we would both agree that something hand-crafted and one of a kind is much more valuable than anything from a jewelry shop. This video certainly gave me some ideas...
i have a small collection of transparent & translucent stones. i have no idea what any of them are, it was the "ooooh pretty!" reaction that inspired me to buy them. they all change color depending on what kind of light goes through them, what angle the light hits them, & which side of the stone you are looking at. i glued them to a window & i can see the color changes any time of day & go outside to see what colors they are from that angle. it's kind of like an escaped kaleidoscope on my window.
Gneiss and schist threw me back to 8th grade earth science jokes 😭🤦🏽♂️
omg, the links between ruby, sapphire, spar/sunstone, new words and how they interrelate 😍🥰👍
So, I play clarinet, and my favorite mouthpiece is a Pomarico crystal mouthpiece that changes color with the type of light it’s in, being more blueish outside and a reddish purple under stage lights. I’ve always wondered what it is, and now I know! It sounded similar to alexandrite, but the colors were wrong (blue rather than green). After some research, it sounds like a synthesized crystal where corundum is laced with vanadium.
Hank really loves his long cool words.
Best example I've owned was a sapphire crystal. Bright light pure green across the crystal, fire engine red with a purple edging along it's length. It's only defect was size, it cut to .18 carat.
I think Zultanite would be a nice addition to this video, it's a unique gem only found in Turkey, which changes color depending on light source
My favorite color changing gems are Opal, Alexandrite, Moonstone, and Angel Aura
I bought my wife an Alexandrite engagement ring because it looks awesome and her birthday is in June. These stones are so cool looking, I'd love to have a fist sized chunk of each of them.
You've should've also talked about colour change garnet.
My engagement ring has a sizeable corundum in it. I found it was also really sensitive to the light around it. It was normally pink (people would ask what stone it was, I always asked them what colour, because on occasion it looked red), but in some light it was green. I'm not sure how much in the way of actual dichroism I got, because of the cut and mounting, but it was always a fascinating colour, and not always the same one.
Not sure it falls under the same topic exactly, but labradorite is neat. The way it refracts light is unique.
You forgot to mention how rubies change color under pressure. They're used in DACs to measure pressures over 100GPa. Def the coolest crystal on the list 👌
I should add, most (maybe all) the crystals you listed have this property. Rubies are just the most useful for high pressure experiments. ;P
While people go nuts for diamonds and spend money on them. I love my corundum and this video proves how much more amazing it is.