Some Info About Gems

IveyStyle

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What are Gems?

Some minerals are highly prized because of their exceptional radiance and color. The main physical properties of gemstones are color, luster, how light passes through, and hardness. The gem form of corundum is a ruby, but non-gemstone corundum is used as an abrasive (emery) in sandpaper.


-Ruby in the Rough-

Its green surroundings showcase a ruby from Tanzania in its unpolished beauty. Rubies, valued as precious gems, are the mineral corundum in its red form. Perhaps the country best known for its rubies was Myanmar (Burma), but the country's production has greatly decreased. Today rubies are also created synthetically in the lab
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-Yellow Diamond-
The igneous rock kimberlite sets off a yellow diamond from South Africa, a country known for its diamond mines. At 616 carats, one of the largest diamonds in the world—the Kimberley octahedron—is a yellow diamond.


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-Rubies-

Rubies shine red against black rocks. Ruby, the common name for the mineral corundum in its red form, is a precious gemstone. If the mineral has a blue color it's known as a sapphire. Made up of the elements aluminum and oxygen, corundum also can be yellow, gray, or brown


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-Beryl Emerald-

When the mineral beryl takes on a green form, we know it as an emerald. Highly valued by Mesoamerican cultures, some of the finest emeralds come from Colombia. Beryl is a beryllium-aluminum silicate, and its color comes from small amounts of chromium.

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-Gem Mining
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Awash in yellow, a gem miner near Ratnapura, Sri Lanka, separates stones from clay-laden mud. Local industry relies on the precious and semiprecious stones found in the mines, some of which are more than 40 feet (12 meters) deep.


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-Topaz-
This cut topaz gemstone shows off its striking blue coloration, but the mineral also occurs in a colorless form or with a yellow or green color. A red topaz is a rarity. Topaz occurs in the igneous rock rhyolite.


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-Star Sapphire-
A sapphire, the common name for the mineral corundum in its transparent blue form, sparkles. As seen here, some sapphires, when cut to a convex shape, exhibit a striking six-pointed star in direct sunlight. While sapphires are found in a few locations around the world, these "star" sapphires often originate in Sri Lanka.
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-Tourmaline-
A polished tourmaline from India gleams. Cut in a convex form known as a cabochon, this red tourmaline could also be called a rubellite because of its red coloration. An Egyptian legend explains that tourmalines come in so many different colors because they passed through a rainbow on the journey from the Earth's center, but scientists know that a tourmaline's chemical composition determines its color.

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IveyStyle

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A California man filters dirt through a sluice (a tool with barriers along the bottom that trap heavy gold) while panning at Gold Prospecting Adventures in May 2008.



 
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IveyStyle

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Gem hunting is like playing the geological lottery. One person may spend hours performing backbreaking work and pay fees for access to mine tailings only to find a few semiprecious stones that aren't worth much. Another person may randomly reach into a pile of dirt and pull out a diamond worth thousands of dollars.
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An emerald hunter shows off a small emerald found outside a mine in Muzo, Colombia.

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IveyStyle

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Who Owns the Gems?

If you find some great specimens, are you allowed to keep them? Probably, but the legal issues surrounding gem hunting can get a little tricky.
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Some gem hunters show off their prized collections in
framed displays.

 
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IveyStyle

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collage.jpg


Where to Find Gems?

You can't just head outside, poke around some rocks and hope to find specific types of gems and crystals. Compare gem hunting to bird watching -- if you want to spot a certain species of bird, you wouldn't aimlessly wander around a forest. You'd learn where that bird lives, what trees it nests in, what it eats, and what its migration patterns are -- leading you to make its eventual discovery.
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This uncut diamond, embedded in river gravel, went on display at the Kimberley Diamond Museum in South Africa.



 
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