CORRECTION: I was wrong about jade! Sorry guys, I clearly got sloppy with my research near the end of the gem list. Jade refers to either jadeite or nephrite, not a mixture of the two. There is no such thing as a 'jadeite-nephrite mixture'. They are both formed in metamorphic zones of oceanic-continental crust collisions, but in different environments. Jadeite is a pyroxene that forms along the oceanic crust boundary in blueschist and eclogite facies metamorphism, under high pressure. Nephrite is an amphibole that forms during metasomatic replacement of serpentinite in the mantle wedge, under lower pressure. People didn’t learn until the 1860s that the two types of jade were very different mineral species, so we continue to call both minerals “jade”, but they are always found separately, not together! Thank you @tedetienne7639 for pointing this out! Sorry again everyone for the misinformation!
Oh! I love this subject! I'd would also love to see a video on the formation of agates, chalcedony, quartz and others like them like Jasper. I've been collecting a LOT of samples from our local sources here in eastern Kentucky and there are some weird, giant, colorful and very odd agates/flints around here. I've found some the size of cinder blocks and you can tell that they broke off from other larger pieces. I just can't seem to find the source layers that they come from and can only find them in the creeks and rivers.
@@GEOGIRL sweet, there's just something about agates that I love, probably because my first experience rock hounding was searching for ellensburg blue agates with my grandpa before he passed.
I'd be interested in learning about sodalite, because (1) it's pretty! and (2) I have so little experience with the feldspathoids and quartz-poor minerals, I really need a refresher with them! Also, zircon is rarely used as a gemstone, and it's far more useful for scientific study, but that's why I'd love to hear about how that gemstone is formed! Thank you!
Once again, great content. I would love a dedicated video of how transition metals lead to different colours. I like the underlying physics invoved in geology. I think I can speak for many of your viewers when I say that I genuinely hope you know how much your channel is appreciated.
Thank you so much! I cannot tell you how nice it is to see comments like this. With the growth of my channel, I tend to see and focus more on the negative comments, but comments like this one always remind me that there are people out there enjoying and appreciating my videos and that really motivates me to continue! :)
@@GEOGIRL I would have hoped that you would not recieve many (any?) negative comments. You are right up there with my favourite science channels and clearly the best channel on geology by a long margin. With Pbs space time, Event horizon, Steve Mould your channel sits comfortably. You have a real talent, science communication is not easy. Ignore bad comments, keep doing things your way.
Excellent video! Thank you! I studied gemology for a while, and I really enjoyed how they have their own understanding and terminology about gems. It’s definitely its own thing within geology that deserves more attention, like this video. Also, I thought you were on a break, but I just KNEW you couldn’t stay away for too long! You’re just too passionate about geology, and too good at teaching it!
Thanks for the awesome video. This is perfect timing, I'm about to leave on a trip into the north cascades to dig crystals. I'll be heading up to the golden horn batholith, there are tons of interesting gems and minerals in that area.
Oh, wow, the sheer qualit of this. It's incredible!!!!!!!!!!!! I hugely love this sooooo much. Thank you for your insane high quality work, your website is also incredibly beautiful. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR WORK.
Good to see you again Geo Girl!☺️ You reached 31k wow! Last time I came it was less than 10k glad your channel is growing I hope this channel will reach 100k 😊
If only we had science teachers like her back in the day. She took a half hour and schooled me what it took my teachers months, and this was with a smile. Great video and thanks for sharing this with us.
I despise this sort of comment. This is a great channel, but teachers have to work with a different syllabus. People like you always blame hard-working teachers for your own ignorance.
Thank you very much geo girl your knowledge about gems and gemmology is amazin being geologist and explanation about gemstones excellent we want to see more videos about gemstones because we are in gem and jewelry field
I need someone like you when I'm gem hunting. I found a great spot where lava use to flow/. Found a beautiful black petrified wood. And tons of other shinys.
Super content as always! What I would love is more content with maps. Not that I want you to create an army of rock hounds but something that associates the classroom with our world. I live in wonderful Colorado with so many geology lessons outside my door. But, I also travel extensively in both the US and abroad and lately Baja, Mexico. I want to be able to associate my surroundings with geologic history. I believe that is what you do with your studies. In other words, it would be cool to have more field content but understandably, using maps might be more practical than a field trip to Mount Antero, Colorado where aquamarine is just laying about.
this is a good idea, I havea hard time visualizing in my head how these terrains and goelogical features change over time. I bet a group of PYthon Gurus could do some crazy Moving map animations with some of the USGS data available. All of you guys are amaizng. Steve, Keep teaching! Please. We need you more than ever now.
Mt wife has a "thing" about Garnet. Now I learn that there are a bunch of different types of Garnet. Almandine, Pyrope, and Spessartine, depending on if it's iron-aluminium, aluminium silicate, or manganese aluminium. And it gets more complicated from there. (Enough to make your head spin)
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing and your efforts. This brought to mind Mt. Girnar. A true gem of planet Earth. It has a hexagonal inner ring of olivine-gabbro that surrounds its central mountain, and many geometric shapes reminiscent of gems. Its central mountain is littered with channels where volatiles flowed through the monzonite-diorite core. The mantle boundary is ~35km centered on the mountain and decreasing to ~30km at a radius of approximately 60km from the center of the mountain. Reflector segments have been proposed to exist down to the moho starting from around the ~10km radius mountain to, at the moho, a radius of ~50km. Something important is going on with this mountain that relates to so many aspects of geology. It seems like many of the principles of gemstone formation were at play in the overall formation of this mountain, in a fractal way.
My mom buys these gems from people who say they have magical properties like healing. Is there any way I can scientifically convince her that this isn’t true? I tried telling her it’s a con but she doesn’t buy it lol
I don't believe that your mum can be convinced scientifically. You might need to bribe her psychic to tell her about the secret 1100s curse put on all gemstones. The magic has not worked since the true wickens were killed during the crusades.
I would be interested in seeing a little more on how metals create the colours in minerals. I also watch the "Periodic Videos" channel and they touch on how metals burn with different coloured flames and tend to make very colourful salts, so getting a geologic perspective sounds really interesting.
Awesome presentation. Thanks. You've provided a nice framework from which I can possibly identify some of the "agate" like rocks I find on San Diego beaches. I have one in particular I might want your help with but I'll watch part 2 before reaching out.
Not sure if you've already done this or not - but would like to see you do a video on transition metals and the colors in minerals. Thank You for the informative and enjoyable content
I was just channel surfing and this video caught my eye! I'm currious about the "precipitation" part of the proccess ...just trying to form a mental picture. Is it likened to the hardwater deposits that we struggle with in our bathrooms? Or like the slow dripping accumulation of salts into the forms of stalactites and stalagmites? I really have no idea about these things but I imagine that fluids not just water but fluids in general carry the minerals in solution and deposit them like the ring around the tub. Only, there are no pumice deposits anywhere to naturally scour them away!
Great question! I will talk more about precipitation in this weeks 'part 2' gemstone video, but in general you are absolutely right with your examples. It is just the solidification of salts/minerals from water that is over saturated in those salt's ions. For example: if you dissolve table salt (NaCl) in a cup of water and leave that cup out in a dry place until the water fully evaporates, the NaCl will re-precipitate and be left at the bottom of the cup once dry. The reason is because when you first put the salt in, the water is undersaturated in Na+ and Cl- ions so the NaCl salt dissociates into these ions (aka: it dissolves), then as the water evaporates, this leaves behind a solution more saturated in Na+ & Cl- (since only H2O is evaporating, not the salt ions), once the solution becomes 'supersaturated' in these ions, they are no longer stable dissolved in solution and they 'precipitate' out of solution to form solid crystals. So basically, it is a reversible reaction and whether the mineral dissolves or precipitates is all just about what is thermodynamically (energetically) favorable at that time. This evaporation-precipitation process is often how these mineral deposits form in nature and that is why we call them 'evaporite' minerals. But there are other ways that minerals can 'precipitate', for example, life can induce the precipitation of minerals like CaCO3 for their shells/skeletons (e.g., mollusks, sponges, & corals) by increasing pH which favors CaCO3 precipitation or by directly taking Ca2+ and CO32- ions into their cells where they can become saturated enough to precipitate. Anyway, I could talk about this all day, so I will stop now but don't worry I have a video about calcium carbonate minerals coming out very soon that will answer a lot of your precipitation questions! ;)
I love your videos. I am beginning a PhD in geology/geoscience and I am inspired by you helping others. If you ever need help in gemstones again, I'm very good at that I actually work for a mining company that was mining gemstones in Afghanistan and I have a very good survey of various gemstones and can recognize the rough Crystal versions, and sort them by quality to be cut into gemstones for jewelry.
Minerals are so cool. My house sits on outer margin of a large intrusive mafic formation. Results in a magnificent variety of minerals in my backyard stream! Millions of years ago must’ve been a major hydrothermal alteration party back there.
13:55 Hey that reminds me of the forming of grain boundaries in quench-hardened steel. I'm by no means an expert on the matter, all I know about it I learned from RU-vid videos. But I think I got the basic concept right, which is that slower cooling allows for larger grains to form in the steel, which makes the cold steel bendy and soft. Quench-hardening forces rapid cooling, which results in smaller grains, making the cold steel much harder and less flexible / more brittle. I'm a trained carpenter from germany and interested in related trades like steel working, copper working and brick laying. I saw one video about an old citizen who still repairs files (the ones for filing wood and the ones for filing metal) in a traditional way. He collects used files with a hand wagon and brings them to his work shop, where the files are put in an oven to reverse the quench-hardening the files went through when they were repaired / produced. This makes the steel soft and bendy again, which allows him to shave off the old filing profile and then work out a new profile. He finishes it by heating them up again to a red glow and then quench-hardening them again. Formation of micro structures is really cool to me. I remember sitting in middle school, unable to make sense out of the logic "well, atoms simply are the way they are, trust me bro, don't ask too many questions". I'm referring to the "solar system model", that made it look like electrons orbit the nucleus. This didn't make any sense, because electrons running circles around a nucleus with the opposite charge would lead to the electrons getting sucked into the nucleus. School really did a great job at making fascinating concepts boring and off-putting. Only after school did I realize how cool nature's laws actually are. Even when looking at the example of formation of gemstones, where we are talking about tiny atoms, there's yet another whole realm of interactions going on on a much smaller scales. I wonder if one day there will be yet another dimension of matter being discussed. I learned about atoms in school, after school I learned about the subatomic realm. It was really trippy to realize that the entire universe is completely devoid of any actual solid matter in the common sense, and instead is a realm of pure energy in various forms interacting with itself. Energy bounces off of energy, hits our eyes, is converted into another form of energy, which travels to our brains and is there interpreted as a representation of a world of solid matter. Only from our gigantic perspective does it seem like solid matter exists. Even a tardigrade is gigantic organism. Since everything is just energies interacting on a small enough scale and they all seem to have strict behavioral rules, I assume that the theory that we could precisely calculate all of the future and the past if given all of the information is correct. Trippy stuff, especially when you're on serotonin-mimicking psychedelics and can suddenly see structures in everything and can see plants in all of their life phases at once. So it's fun to think about the fact that what you described about gemstones is actually just a bunch of energies trying to reach a stable state. Makes me wonder what entropy in the universe will lead to in the end. A state of pure equilibrium (big freeze ?) ? Or will the expansion of space reverse at one point, resulting in a shrinking universe that forces all energy into a singularity-like state, leading to another big bang ? Sadly we will never find out before our bodies fail us and we return to the soup of energy.
I'm glad you mention what's coming in the next video because i was gonna ask if some those were gonna be in the next vid. :P Not really gemstones, but, i understand there's materials actually HARDER than diamond like: Wurtzite boron nitride Lonsdaleite Dyneema Palladium microalloy glass?
Thank you for explaining the grey areas. My college friend wrote a song called Soft Lines. "There are only soft lines in nature..." May have to record that one again. We had a band back then, the eighties...
Near the start you used the qualifier “sometimes” for the use of gemstones in industrial processes. I’m curious about the stats for those uses. I bet there are more diamond-containing tools than diamond rings, and other gemstones are even used in things as common as phones.
Really? Wow, I would've said there are more diamond rings than tools! But gemstones are not my expertise, so you're probably right. I'll have to look into that, that is such a interesting question! :D
Definitely more diamond cutting tools, at a cursory glance I have 14+ diamond abrasive tools sitting on my workbench , and that doesn't even count all of the Dremel bits. Plus the diamonds used are the ones with poor clarity and color and other imperfections so there is a greater supply of industrial use diamonds than gem grade.
I work with a drilling crew, taking 5-foot samples of rock cores, and we use diamond coring drill bits all the time. Using the hardest mineral to cut other rocks - it’s only sensible!
Wonderful, two generations of lady geologists in one family! I wasn’t among the very first ice-breakers, but in the 80s, there weren’t many of us around.
Transform or purified by natural processes. Great content. More should comprehend Crystals they hold many keys to our future. Perovskite are my favorites and all the piezoelectrics ♾️🙏🏼
Rachel: Nicely done! I may have missed it but did you mention the informal designation of precious vs. semiprecious gemstones. I may be wrong but I believe only diamond, ruby, sapphire and emerald are considered precious, the remainder semiprecious. Also, a few weeks ago I sent you a comment that you may not have seen. I was just curious to hear your response…so here it is once more: “I’ve been thinking about what initially drove me towards geology. What enticed me about it? I think a large factor was the element of field work (plus minimal math requirements😆!). The ability to work outdoors and attempt to unravel some of the earth’s mysteries to me was irresistible. I think many of us felt that way. Now this may not be applicable to your channel but I would think a video introduction to the nature of geologic field work would be an interesting topic for the general public. I don’t believe that you have addressed this subject in your many videos, but it really is part of the groundwork basic to a geologist’s education. How is data collected and what basic instruments or tools are used? How is an area mapped? What is stratigraphic section and how is it measured? How are contacts and faults delineated? How is structural data collected, etc…etc? It’s a big and fascinating topic. For the past couple of years I’ve even considered tackling the subject myself with a series of “a day in the life of” RU-vid videos…but, truly, you would be the very best teacher. At any rate…just a thought…and an idea for future works.”
I had a slide about that categorization into precious vs semiprecious, but then took it out because the video was too long haha, but you are correct! Those are the precious ones :) From what I found, however, the distinction is somewhat subjective. Also, I have a feeling you were not alone in taking into account the lack of math required hahaha! ;) Thanks so much as always for suggestions! I certainly have many of those 'field' and demonstrative topics on my list, they are just not on my immediate list due to current time and resource constraints, but I will cover them at some point! In the mean time, I would love to see your take if you do decide to make that series :D
Fascinating. By the way, I have difficulty communicating because I had a stroke in Broca’s area, the part of the brain that controls speech. 2/8/2021 but I lived again. (My wife helped me compose this.)
a fun little note: diamonds can also form with a black coloration, typically as a product of a carbon-rich meteorite impact. The black color is the product of their crystalline lattice including formations of graphite, another arrangement of carbon.
Great video, it cleared up many questions I've had regarding formation of these particular gemstones. Looking forward to Part 2. I do have a couple of questions about diamonds. You mentioned that diamonds are formed from carbon transported down to the mantle by subduction. Based on where the diamonds occur on the surface, is it possible to imaginarily run the plate tectonic treadmill in reverse and link them to a particular biologic occurrence on the surface? I’ve read that the last eruption of the type that brings diamonds to the surface occurred about 100 mya and it’s unlikely there will be any more of this type; is that true? My favorite gemstone is Labradorite, BTW.
It may not be true that synthetic diamond comes only in clear and green. Polycrystalline diamond is black. It is formed naturally, and is called carbonado. It is also pressed onto a tungsten carbide puck to form a PDC [Polycrystalline Diamond Compact] in huge presses. It may be black only because it is polycrystalline and not mono crystalline like gem stones are. It can be polished to a mirror finish, and can make some pretty things. It also stays shiny, if it was polished using very fine diamond grit.
I just found out that I have a location in BC, Canada for phenakite. Didn't know this stuff was so valuable and rare. Just saying that I really want to see what gemstone you got. A video dedicated to your own stuff behind you wold be so cool, GG.
As a person that loves rocks I’ve subscribed within the first minute of your video, I’ve been somewhat lucky with finding treasures within our planet and I’m hoping to become more educated on this wonderful subject. Best regards from Lloyd.
I see terrestrial diamonds were covered, but not the Kimberlite Pipe, where supersonic speeds (or high speeds) may be required to prevent the diamond from burning up. Diamonds are formed in the Earth's mantle at a depth of 150 to 200 km and brought to the surface rapidly in a volcanic vent that forms a kimberlite pipe. The magma travels at several hundred kilometers per hour as it moves through the Earth's crust, and may be ejected at supersonic speeds.3 The volcanic cone formed above the kimberlite pipe is very small in comparison to volcanoes like Mount St. Helens, but the magma originates at depths at least 3 times as great.0 When magma from these deep volcanic pipes cool down, it solidifies into Kimberliterocks, and the volcanic pipe from which magma comes out is called Kimberlite Pipe. If the speed of magma is not high enough, diamond can change its crystalline structure to graphite if remained exposed to magma for too long.
I saw an exhibit of carved jade in san Francisco that was all sorts of colors. I was a kid when i saw the exhibit so i thought the green carvings were jade and the other colors were something else. Nice to know i was wrong. I like learning new stuff.
I have always been fascinated as to how crystals and gems form within magma. It is alwys so hard to wrap my head around it because, eventhough its effectively very similar to how crystals grow in water, because you think magma and rock its very hard to picture how it can happen in such a hot and thick environment, its just extremely slow.
