Natures treasure chest. A riddle.

[Thunderbird]

:hihi:

 

 

A fractionalized melt,

A crystallized belt

 

Aquamarine and topaz

 

Gems a plenty is has, :eek:

 

 

 

What is it?

[Buffy]

A geode?

 

When did your sparkle turn to fire and your warmth become desire? :hihi:

Buffy

[Thunderbird]

Nope, good try:D

[REASON]

How 'bout a Glacier.

[Thunderbird]

Wrong:doh:

[REASON]

Wrong:doh:

 

C'mon, that wasn't that bad of a guess was it?

 

(Still thinking)

[Thunderbird]

Not bad, A fractionalized melt,

A crystallized belt. :)But you are cold when you should think hot.

[Buffy]

Granite?

 

Very small rocks, :hihi:

Buffy

[Thunderbird]

Yer hot, :agree:I mean close, very close indeed.:hihi:

[Thunderbird]

:)One word ,Three syllables.

[REASON]

How 'bout Dolomite.

[Buffy]

Pegmatite?

 

There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about, :hihi:

Buffy

[REASON]

Pegmatite?

 

Buffy

 

I think you got it, Buffy. :hihi:

[Thunderbird]

How 'bout Dolomite.

 

 

DOLIMITE IS NOT RIGHT :hihi:

 

Is there a geologist on site ?

[Thunderbird]

Pegmatite?

 

There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about, :hihi:

Buffy

 

 

We have a winner !

 

 

Nature's giant treasure chest: Pegmatites.

Born of fluid, heat, and pressure, minerals dazzle us with their breathtaking colors and shapes and astonish us with their usefulness. They are forged underground, where forces that have been at work for billions of years continue to make more minerals. A mineral is a naturally occurring, inorganic solid having a specific chemical composition. Most minerals occur as crystals. Every crystal has an orderly, internal pattern of atoms, with a distinctive way of locking new atoms into that pattern to repeat it again and again. The internal arrangement of atoms determines the minerals' chemical and physical properties, including color. Gems are mineral crystals that have been cut and polished. Although almost any of the four thousand kinds of minerals can be cut into gemstones, in practice, most gems used in jewelry come from only about 15 different minerals.

Many of the important gem minerals seen in today's market - aquamarine, tourmaline, and topaz, among others - come from an unusual type of rock known as a pegmatite. Gem-bearing pegmatites are crystalline igneous rocks that are distinguished by their large-size crystals, concentrations of certain chemical elements otherwise rare in the earth's crust, and various unusual minerals.

Granite-Pegmatite Systems

Pegmatites represent the end products of the magmatic stage in the evolution of granitic melts. The appreciable degrees of fractionation required to produce granitic pegmatites can result in significant accumulations of large-ion lithophile elements (LILE) such as Li, Rb, and Cs and high field-strength elements (HFSE) such as Nb, Sn, and Ta. "Fertile" granitoids parental to rare-element-enriched pegmatites have features that distinguish them from barren granitoids; these features serve both as a prospecting tool for selecting regions worthy of study, and are predictive of the degree of rare-element enrichment of associated pegmatites. Fertile granites are typically late- to post-tectonic and emplaced at moderate to shallow crustal levels. They are typically texturally inhomogeneous, often with megacrystic (pegmatoid) pods or regions. These granites are highly silicic, leucocratic, and meta- to peraluminous. They are typically mica bearing; best prospects are two-mica granites, but biotite granites and, rarely, biotite-hornblende granites have been known to generate rare-element-enriched pegmatites. They generally carry a S-type geochemical signature (White and Chappell 1983);