Mastodawn

Celestia Emerald Cut Engagement Ring NYC

https://carbonpetals.com/blogs/news/celestia-emerald-cut-engagement-ring-nyc

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Divine Intentions 2d ago

Good morning. Today is Wednesday, April 22nd. We are closed today but we will be open tomorrow as usual.

Looking for some Amethyst? Here's some of what we have. Get these and more in-store and online. Online at www.divineintents.com

#amethyst #crystals #gemstones

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of the Pnictogen Wing 4d ago

I've been meaning to write something about the strange semi-appropriateness of the choices of minerals or gemstones that furnish the substrates, as it were, supporting the sci-fi Gem civilization that we glimpse in Steven Universe and its related media.

At a first glance, the choice of which character is supported by a Gem of which mineral might seem as arbitrary as the usage of "crystals" by a whıte-Western practitioner of spellwork. But I've noted some curious correspondences of Gem gemstone material to some characteristic or aspect of the Gem character's function or personality.

Take Ruby, for example. Ruby is one of those gemstones which can be synthesized most easily—the Verneuil method for making synthetic corundum by sifting aluminum oxide powder into a very hot gas flame was invented in 1883—so ruby is an eminently suitable workhorse material, commonly used in science and engineering, as with chromium-doped ruby laser rods and ruby bearings and ruby optical components. And Ruby is a tough working-class Gem, a Ruby rider, a sturdy solitary stone. As we all know and love. =D

Sapphire is also corundum but a little trickier. The red color of ruby comes from the "color centers" (i.e. out of place atoms or bonds in a crystal lattice which absorb specific wavelengths of light) created by doping corundum with chromium. The blue color of sapphire requires two elements, titanium and iron, forming a charge-transfer pair which absorbs light in a specific absorption band. There are other examples of such charge-transfer pairings in chemistry, associated with unusually colorful substances, e.g. the iodine-starch complex or the coördination complexes that form between electron-rich and electron-depleted aromatic compounds (e.g. sym-trinitrobenzene with hexamethylbenzene.) Whether or not that's especially fitting to Sapphire (as a Steven Universe character who can see the future) is not for me to guess. =p

Garnet is not ruby + sapphire, in terms of chemical substance. But garnet (the mineral) is a gemstone which features many metals from the periodic table, just as it takes different metals to make either the blue of Sapphire or the red of Ruby. That's a weak association but it's something. As a mineral of multiple metals, rather than an almost-pure single metal oxide such as corundum (Al2O3), garnet seems to fit the Gem fusion in Steven Universe, Garnet. And like ruby, garnet has been put to industrial use (and there's laser rods of various garnets, including a lot of manmade garnets incorporating pure lanthanides) which suits the toughness with which Garnet always bears herself.

Pearl seems to have very many layers in her memory, like you'd expect a pearl-stone to have, with its lamellar structure. Peridot is made of humble stuff, magnesium and iron and silicon—among the most common elements in the Cosmos—and its ordinary form olivine is common enough to be useful for casting metals (as "greensand"). But the gemmy variety, peridot, in its best examples has a lovely grass-green sort of greeniness that I happen to find more attractive and pleasing to the eye than the "pure" green of emerald beryl.

The quartzes are all tough, and the cryptocrystalline forms of quartz such as chalcedony and jasper are even tougher, and one can see that reflected in their Gem counterparts. Quartz is one of those minerals which saddens me the most, as it happens, worse than blood diamonds or the niobium and tantalum the technology sector is always thirsty for. Humble, everyday, bedrock-solid quartz.

My! look at the time.

~Chara of Pnictogen

#steven-universe #rocks-and-minerals #gemstones #quartz