Different quartzes

[kotu]

How come there are so many different types of quartzes? According to webmineral.com, the following are all quartz:

Agate
Amethyst
Carnelian
Cat's Eye
Chalcedony
Chrysoprase
Citrine
Flint
Jasper
Tiger Eye

I don't really care what words like cryptocrystalline or pseudomorph mean, it just seems weird how you get all those types from the basic quartz molecule, as well as glass.

Is it complicated?

[brigidrose]

There is a biik called the Crystal Bible..... it is a very good source it breaks
all the crystals down with color, power and meditation..

[kotu]

i've got a copy

[kotu]

kinda worked it out, now i have a different question

any ideas how much time passes between different layers of tigers eye being formed? guesses? or does it not happen like that? that same website says it forms from asbestos, so i guess it has something to do with the time asbestos takes to form. makes sense to me anyway. does anyone know?

[Wolfsong]

there are a bunch of different types of asbestos as well. As far as time... thousands and thousands of years.. need to keep in mind though that it grows as long fibers and then the fibers.. over long periods of time... get compacted together to form what we know as asbestos in ints many forms. Tigers eye and similar forms get impurities added to it and are compacted longer and under greater pressure making it harder and more solid.... other forms can be pulled apart with your fingers.

[kotu]

cool

[CzechWoods]

one centimeter of crystal needs about 1 million years to grow. just to give you a time frame

[thyself]

I have just come across a book that is very helpful. It is caleld the Essential Crystal Guide. It has teh chemical make up of each stone listed, as well as how and where each stone or mineral forms. The reasont ehre are so many types of stones that come from teh same basic chemical makeup is that there are many different circumstances for their creation. Such as, weather, temperature, time period, density, the different chemicals in the surrounding matirx, etc. It's a nice little book. I am still reading it. But I found that many different crystals have the same or very similar elemental makeup. Many of them are SiO2. It's quite fascinating. Tehre are a few that are very rare that have complex elemental makeup, but they are few and far between.

=0} Blessed Be