Quartz - Polycrystalline

From The Gemology Project
Revision as of 08:57, 28 October 2007 by Doos (talk | contribs) (Quartz - Microcrystalline moved to Quartz - Polycrystalline)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search

Microcrystalline means that the crystals are not recognizable with the naked eye or with a standard microscope.

Minerals made up from even smaller crystals are said to be cryptocrysalline from the greek word 'Kruptos' meaning hidden and are classed as being massive in their habit because they have no orderly stucture. Most are semi-transparent to opaque.

With modern day microscopes with high magnification power, these terms don't seem valid anymore and are refered to as polycrystalline.

Includes stones classified as varieties of the quartz species: