Dictionary:

amber

  (ăm'bər)

1. A hard translucent yellow, orange, or brownish-yellow fossil resin, used for making jewelry and other ornamental objects.
2. A brownish yellow.

1. Having the color of amber; brownish-yellow.
2. Made of or resembling amber: an amber necklace.

[Middle English ambre, from Old French, from Medieval Latin ambra, ambar, from Arabic ‘anbar, ambergris, amber.]

Background

Although considered a gem, amber is a wholly-organic material derived from the resin of extinct species of trees. In the dense forests of the Middle Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, between 10 and 100 million years ago, these resin-bearing trees fell and were carried by rivers to coastal regions. There, the trees and their resins became covered with sediment, and over millions of years the resin hardened into amber. Although many amber deposits remain in ocean residue, geological events often repositioned the amber elsewhere.

For thousands of years, amber has been carved and worked into beads, jewelry, and other types of ornamentation. However, today amber is valued primarily for the astounding array of fossils preserved inside. As sticky resin was exuded by the trees, animals, minerals, and plant materials were trapped in it. As the resin hardened, these fossils—called inclusions—were perfectly preserved, providing modern scientists with invaluable information about extinct species.

Unlike other types of fossils, amber fossils are three-dimensional, with life-like colors and patterns. Even the internal structures of cells may be intact. Often, insects were caught by the resin in active poses, along with their predators, prey, and internal and external parasites. Previously-unknown genera of fossilized insects have been discovered in amber. Intact frogs and lizards, snake skins, bird feathers, hair and bones of mammals, and various plant materials have been preserved in amber. In some cases, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) can be extracted from the fossilized organisms and compared with that of its modern-day counterparts.

History

Amber has been a highly-valued material since earliest times. Worked amber dating back to 11,000 B.C. has been found at archeological sites in England. Amber was widely believed to have magical healing powers. It was used to make varnish as long ago as 250 B.C., and powdered amber was valued as incense. Amber was also traded throughout the world. By identifying the type of amber used in ancient artifacts, scholars can determine the geographical source of the amber and draw conclusions about early trade routes.

In about 600 B.C., the Greek philosopher Thales rubbed amber with silk, causing it to attract dust and feathers. This static electricity was believed to be a unique property of amber until the sixteenth century, when English scientist William Gilbert demonstrated that it was characteristic of numerous materials. He called it electrification, after elektron, the Greek word for amber.

In the Western Hemisphere, the Aztecs and Mayans carved amber and burned it as incense. The Taino Indians of the island of Hispaniola offered gifts of amber to Christopher Columbus.

The decorative use of amber culminated in 1712 with the completion of an entire banquet room made of amber panels constructed for King Frederick I of Prussia. In the nineteenth century amber attained new significance when German scientists began studying the fossils imbedded in it.

Raw Materials

Resins are complex substances that include oily compounds called terpenes. Over time, some terpenes evaporate while others condense and become cross-linked to each other, forming hard polymers. However, different species of trees produce different types and amounts of resins. The exact structure and composition of amber depends on the makeup of the original tree resin, the age of the amber, the environment in which it was deposited, and the thermal conditions and geological forces to which it was exposed. Thus, even amber obtained from similar locations may vary in chemical structure and physical characteristics.

Types of amber

Although deposits of amber occur throughout the world, amber from the coast of the Baltic Sea is the best-known. It is called succinite amber because it contains a substantial amount of succinic acid. Most Baltic amber came from pine tree resin. Amber that lacks succinic acid is classified as retinite amber.

Amber from Mexico and the Dominican Republic began forming 20-30 million years ago from the resins of extinct species of Hymenaea or algarrobo trees. These flowering trees thrived in the canopy of extensive tropical rain forests. They produced copious amounts of resin that eventually hardened into amber. Torrential rains washed the amber to deltas where it was covered with silt. As sea levels changed, the amber settled on the sea floor and the sediment over it hardened into rock. Later, mountain formation pushed up the rocks.

Design

Physical characteristics

Many components of amber are similar to those of modern resins. However the cross-linking of these compounds makes the amber hard, with a high melting point and low solubility. Amber has a hardness of 2-3 on Mohs's scale, the standard for minerals and gems. On this scale, talc is I and diamond is 10. Amber softens at 302°F (150°C) and melts at 482-662°F (250-350°C). With a specific gravity of 1.05-1.12, amber is only slightly more dense than water. It will not completely dissolve in organic solvents.

Amber usually occurs as small irregular masses, nodules, or droplets. Although it can be many different colors, it is most often pale to golden yellow or orange and can be fluorescent. After a few years of exposure to light and air, amber often turns dark red and develops numerous cracks on the surface. Some amber is translucent or even transparent. However, trapped air bubbles can cause amber to be cloudy or opaque. Amber is a poor conductor of heat and large changes in temperature can cause it to fracture.

The Manufacturing
Process

Amber is extracted in different ways, depending on its location. Baltic amber washes up along the shores of the Baltic Sea and as far away as Denmark, Norway, and England. The largest deposits of North American amber are found on the surface of openpit clay mines in Arkansas. In New Jersey, Cretaceous amber is dug from the sand and clay of abandoned pit mines. It is screened, washed, and examined for inclusions. In Asia, amber is found in coal mines. Until the mid-twentieth century, highly-prized amber was mined from deep pits in northern Burma (now Myanmar).

Mining and washing

• Drops or blocks of Baltic amber are mined from open pits of 40-60 million-year-old glauconite sand. Glauconite is a hydrated potassium-iron silicate mineral and these deposits are called "blue earth" because of their blue-green color. After the surface has been cleared, the blue earth is dug out with steam shovels and dredges. It is poured through grates at a washing plant, where streams of water are used to separate the amber from the sand. In the early twentieth century, up to one million lb (450,000 kg) of amber per year were extracted from the blue earth layer of the Samland Peninsula in the eastern Baltic.

  Mexican and Dominican amber may be exposed by landslides on steep mountain slopes and extracted with picks and shovels. It also is mined from pits dug deep into the ground. Much Dominican amber is mined from narrow tunnels carved as far as 600 ft (183 m) into the sides of mountains. Water is baled or pumped out of the tunnels and the miners crawl through, chisel at the rock, and pick out the exposed amber. Dominican amber is washed by the miner, sorted by size, and examined for inclusions.

Clarifying and coloring

• Large trapped air bubbles result in a foamy or frothy type of amber. Microscopic bubbles result in bony or osseous amber that looks like dried bone. Very cloudy amber is called bastard. Amber is clarified by heating in rapeseed oil. The oil penetrates bubbles near the surface and reduces the cloudiness, making even bony or bastard amber more transparent. Amber also may be clarified by heating under pressure with nitrogen and then baking in an oven. Clarification darkens the amber and produces disc-like stress marks, called "sun spangles." Amber may be stained green or reddish. Mexican and Dominican amber is usually clear and transparent and does not need clarifying.

Cutting and reshaping

• For jewelry or carving, amber usually is worked by hand, with a jeweler's saw and fine-toothed files. It is wet-sanded with 320-grit cloth and finished with a 400- or 600-grit wet-sanding cloth. It can be drilled with dry steel drills, using a low speed and slight pressure, to prevent heating and cracking.
• To obtain a clear view of inclusions, one end of an amber piece may be chipped off. Amber with inclusions may be cut or reshaped for examination of the biological specimen or to separate two specimens. Cutting is done with a jeweler's hand saw or, for larger pieces, with a high-speed trim saw with a diamond blade, at speeds up to 4,200 rpm.
• Reshaping is done with various grades of sandpaper. Rough edges from the saw blade may be smoothed with 200- and 400-grit paper, by hand or with a belt sander equipped with a water cooling system, to remove dust and prevent overheating and fracturing or glazing.

Polishing

• Amber for jewelry is polished with tin oxide or cerium oxide, using a leather buff, Jelt wheel or pad, or chamois board. Periodic polishing with a silicone-based wax restores shine and decreases evaporation and surface oxidation.

  Dominican amber is polished with a sander, following the natural contours. Surface oxidation of Dominican amber diminishes the fluorescence and the blue, green, or purple color. Removing the outer layer and repolishing restores the fluorescence. Repolishing may be done by hand or with a cotton buffing wheel, using dental polishing compound, an abrasive for plastics, or other fine neutral-colored polishing compounds. A final hand polishing removes the polishing compound.

  Cretaceous amber more than 65 million years old is very brittle and fractured. After several years of exposure, it is prone to disintegration. Encasing Cretaceous amber in a synthetic resin helps to preserve it.

Pressing

• For producing gems, small clear pieces of amber are softened and fused in a vacuum with steam at 400°F (204°C) or above.
• The pieces are pressed through a fine steel sieve or mesh, mixed, and hardened into blocks. This pressed amber is called ambroid or amberoid and may contain bubbles that have elongated under the heat and pressure. Sometimes modern insect inclusions are inserted into pressed amber and the ambroid may be dyed, usually dark red.

Other processing

• Small pieces of poor quality amber, including about 90% of Baltic amber, are distilled in huge, dry iron retorts. About 60% is recovered as amber colophony, a high-grade varnish. Another 15—20% becomes amber oil, used in medicines, casting, and the highest grade of varnish. About 2%of the products are distilled acids, such as succinic acid, that are used for medicines and varnishes.

Quality Control

Harder and, presumably, older amber is usually considered to be of higher quality. Since mining costs are 28% higher than the value of raw amber, its value is based primarily on its inclusions or on its eventual processing into jewelry and art objects. Therefore, amber is graded according to its size and beauty, as well as the presence and type of inclusions.

Imitation amber with fake inclusions has been produced for at least 600 years. Fresh resins, synthetic polystyrenes, Bakelite, epoxy resins, celluloid, colored glass, plastics, and polyesters all have been used for imitation amber. However, true amber can be distinguished by its hardness, melting temperature, lack of solubility, fluorescence, specific gravity, refractive index (measure of the degree that it bends light), and odor on burning. Sometimes true amber is fractured, a cavity is carved in it for an inclusion embedded in fresh resin, and the piece is resealed.

Byproducts/Waste

About 90% of the world's extractable amber is located in the Kaliningrad region of Russia on the Baltic Sea. There, amber mining and processing has caused widespread environmental degradation. More than 100 million tons of waste has been discharged into the Baltic from the Palmnicken (Yantarny) mine over the past century. This insoluble waste causes high turbidity in the Baltic Sea. The waters of the pollution-sensitive Baltic take 25-30 years to renew themselves.

The Future

The easily-extracted, top layers of Baltic amber were exhausted by the mid-1800s. However it is estimated that over 180,000 tons of amber remain in the Yantarny mine in Kaliningrad. At the current rate of extracetion, amber could be mined there for another 300 years. In addition, mining has resumed in Myanmar and the high-quality Burmese amber is being sold to museums.

Although the process of amber formation from tree resin continues, it takes millions of years for the resin to harden into amber. As amber deposits are depleted by mining, and resin-bearing trees are cut or burned rather than allowed to fossilize, the supply of raw amber will continue to dwindle.

Where to Learn More

Books

Anderson, K. B., and J. C. Crelling, eds. Amber, Resinite, and Fossil Resins. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1995.

Grimaldi, David A. Amber: Window to the Past. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. and the American Museum of Natural History, 1996.

Poinar Jr., George, and Roberta Poinar. The Amber Forest: A Reconstruction of a Vanished World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Other

"Amber Trade and the Environment in the Kaliningrad Oblast." TED Case Studies. 27 July 2001. <http://gurukul.ucc.american.edu/ted/amber.htm>.

Brost, Leif. "Amber: A Fossilized Tree Resin." The Swedish Amber Museum Home Page. 27 July 2001. <http://www.brost.se/eng/education/facts.html>.

[Article by: Margaret Alic]

Most commonly, a generic name for all fossil resins, although it has been restricted by some to refer only to succinite, the mineralogical species of fossil resin making up most of the Baltic Coast deposits. Resins generally are complex mixtures of mono-, sesqui-, di-, and triterpenoids; however, some resins contain aromatic phenols. Among the plants, primarily trees, that produce copious amounts of resin that may fossilize to become amber, two-thirds are tropical or subtropical.

Although ambers occur throughout the world in deposits from Carboniferous to Pleistocene in age, they have been reported most commonly from Cretaceous and Tertiary strata and often are associated with coal or lignites. Amber may contain beautifully preserved insects, spiders, flowers, leaves, and even small animals. The most extensively studied deposits are those from the Baltic Coast, Alaska, Canada, Burma, Dominican Republic, and Mexico.

When amber is used for jewelry, it usually is transparent yellow, reddish-brown, or “amber” color. Translucent or semitranslucent amber is used for pipe stems, decorating small boxes, and a variety of ornamental purposes. The specific gravity varies from 1.05 to 1.10, and hardness from 1 to 3 on Mohs scale.

At one time, chemical studies of amber were mineralogically oriented because the purpose was to describe and classify amber as a semiprecious gem. However, phytochemical studies comparing fossil and present-day resins are providing information regarding the botanical origins of ambers.

The predominantly tropical or subtropical occurrence of amber-producing plants through geologic time has led to evolutionary studies of the natural purpose of resins and their possible defensive role for trees against injury and disease inflicted by the high diversity of insects and fungi in tropical environments. See also Gem; Mineralogy; Resin.

For more information on amber, visit Britannica.com.

Occasionally said to be rubbed on sore eyes and sprained limbs (Henderson, 1866: 113), or worn for chest ailments (Folk-Lore 53 (1942), 98). One soldier from the First World War reckoned he owed his life to his amber bead (Lovett, 1925: 13).

hypericum perforatum.

Amber pendants. The oval pendant is 52 by 32 mm (2 by 1.3 inches).

Amber is the common name for fossil resin or tree sap that is appreciated for its inherent and interesting mixture of colours and it is widely used for the manufacture of ornamental objects. Although not mineralized, it is sometimes considered and used as a gemstone. Most of the world's amber is in the range of 30–90 million years old. Semi-fossilized resin or sub-fossil amber is called copal.

The occurrence of insects inside amber was duly noticed by the Romans and led them to the (correct) theory that at some point, amber had to be in a liquid state to cover the bodies of insects. Hence they gave it the expressive name of Suceinum or Gum-Stone a name that is still in use today to describe succinic acid as well as succinite, a term given to a particular type of amber by James Dwight Dana (see below under Baltic Amber). The Greek name for amber was ηλεκτρον (Electron) and was connected to the Sun God, one of whose titles was Elector or the Awakener. ^[1]

The modern term electron was coined in 1894, using the Greek word for amber (and which was then translated as Electrum) because of its electrostatic properties and whilst analyzing elementary charge for the first time. The ending -on, common for all subatomic particles, was used in analogy to the word ion. ^{[2] [3]}

Heating amber will soften it and eventually it will burn, which is why in Germanic languages the word for amber is a literal translation of Burn-Stone (In German it is Bernstein, in Dutch it is Barnsteen etc.). Heated below 200°C, amber suffers decomposition, yielding an "oil of amber", and leaving a black residue which is known as "amber colophony", or "amber pitch"; when dissolved in oil of turpentine or in linseed oil this forms "amber varnish" or "amber lac". As mentioned above, amber was well known for its electrostatic properties since antiquity (though not identified as such until the concept of electronic charge became clear).

A mosquito and a fly in this Baltic amber necklace are between 40 and 60 million years old

Chemistry of amber

Amber is heterogeneous in composition, but consists of several resinous bodies more or less soluble in alcohol, ether and chloroform, associated with an insoluble bituminous substance. Amber is a macromolecule by free radical polymerization of several precursors in the labdane family, communic acid, cummunol and biformene.^[4] These labdanes are diterpenes (C₂₀H₃₂) and trienes which means that the organic skeleton has three alkene groups available for polymerization. As amber matures over the years, more polymerization will take place as well as isomerization reactions, crosslinking and cyclization. The average composition of amber leads to the general formula C₁₀H₁₆O.

Amber in geology

Baltic amber or succinite (historically documented as Prussian amber) is found as irregular nodules in a marine glauconitic sand, known as blue earth, occurring in the Lower Oligocene strata of Sambia in Kaliningrad Oblast, where it is now systematically mined.^[5] It appears, however, to have been partly derived from yet earlier Tertiary deposits (Eocene); and it occurs also as a derivative mineral in later formations, such as the drift. Relics of an abundant flora occur as inclusions trapped within the amber while the resin was yet fresh, suggesting relations with the flora of Eastern Asia and the southern part of North America. Heinrich Göppert named the common amber-yielding pine of the Baltic forests Pinites succiniter, but as the wood, according to some authorities, does not seem to differ from that of the existing genus it has been also called Pinus succinifera. It is improbable, however, that the production of amber was limited to a single species; and indeed a large number of conifers belonging to different genera are represented in the amber-flora.

Amber from the Middle Cretaceous is known from Ellsworth County, Kansas. This approximately 100 million year old amber has inclusions of bacteria and amoebae. They are morphologically very close to Leptothrix, and the modern genera Pontigulasia and Nebela. Morphological stasis is considered to be confirmed.^[6]

Amber inclusions

An ant trapped in amber.

Insect trapped in amber. The amber piece is 10 mm (0.4 inches) long. In the enlarged picture, the insect's antennae are easily seen.

The resin contains, in addition to the beautifully preserved plant-structures, numerous remains of insects, spiders, annelids, frogs^[7], crustaceans and other small organisms which became enveloped while the exudation was fluid. In most cases the organic structure has disappeared, leaving only a cavity, with perhaps a trace of chitin. Even hair and feathers have occasionally been represented among the enclosures. Fragments of wood frequently occur, with the tissues well-preserved by impregnation with the resin; while leaves, flowers and fruits are occasionally found in marvelous perfection. Sometimes the amber retains the form of drops and stalactites, just as it exuded from the ducts and receptacles of the injured trees. It is thought that, in addition to exuding onto the surface of the tree, amber resin also originally flowed into hollow cavities or cracks within trees, thereby leading to the development of large lumps of amber of irregular form^[8]. The abnormal development of resin has been called succinosis. Impurities are quite often present, especially when the resin dropped on to the ground, so that the material may be useless except for varnish-making, whence the impure amber is called firniss. Enclosures of pyrites may give a bluish colour to amber. The so-called black amber is only a kind of jet. Bony amber owes its cloudy opacity to minute bubbles in the interior of the resin. A type of amber known as blue amber exists in the Dominican Republic.

Amber locations

Baltic amber

True amber yields on dry distillation succinic acid, the proportion varying from about 3% to 8%, and being greatest in the pale opaque or bony varieties. The aromatic and irritating fumes emitted by burning amber are mainly due to this acid. True Baltic amber is distinguished by its yield of succinic acid, for many of the other fossil resins which are often termed amber contain either none of it, or only a very small proportion; hence the name succinite proposed by Professor James Dwight Dana, and now commonly used in scientific writings as a specific term for the real Prussian amber. Succinite has a hardness between 2 and 3, which is rather greater than that of many other fossil resins. Its specific gravity varies from 1.05 to 1.10. An effective tool for amber analysis is IR spectroscopy. It enables the distinction between Baltic and non-Baltic amber varieties because of a specific carbonyl absorption and it can also detect the relative age of an amber sample.

Wood resin, the ancient source of amber

Although amber is found along the shores of a large part of the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, the great amber-producing country is the promontory of Sambia, now part of Russia. About 90% of the world's extractable amber is located in the Kaliningrad region of Russia on the Baltic Sea.^[9] Pieces of amber torn from the sea-floor are cast up by the waves, and collected at ebb-tide. Sometimes the searchers wade into the sea, furnished with nets at the end of long poles, which they drag in the sea-weed containing entangled masses of amber; or they dredge from boats in shallow water and rake up amber from between the boulders. Divers have been employed to collect amber from the deeper waters. Systematic dredging on a large scale was at one time carried on in the Curonian Lagoon by Messrs Stantien and Becker, the great amber merchants of Königsberg. At the present time extensive mining operations are conducted in quest of amber. The pit amber was formerly dug in open works, but is now also worked by underground galleries. The nodules from the blue earth have to be freed from matrix and divested of their opaque crust, which can be done in revolving barrels containing sand and water. The sea-worn amber has lost its crust, but has often acquired a dull rough surface by rolling in sand.

Since the establishment of the Amber Road, amber (which is also commonly referred to as the "Lithuanian gold") has substantially contributed to Lithuanian economy and culture. Nowadays a great variety of amber jewelry and amberware is offered to foreign tourists in most souvenir shops as distinctive to Lithuania and its cultural heritage. The Amber Museum containing unique specimen of amber has been established in Palanga, near the sea coast.

Other locations

A lesser known source of amber is in the Ukraine, within a marshy forested area on the Volyhn-Polesie border. Due to the shallow depth that this amber is found at it can be extracted with the simplest of tools, and has hence led to an economy of 'amber poaching' under cover of the forest. This Ukrainian amber is much appreciated for its wide range of colours, and was used in the restoration of 'amber room' in the Empress Catherines palace in St Petersberg (see below).

Rolled pieces of amber, usually small but occasionally of very large size, may be picked up on the east coast of England, having probably been washed up from deposits under the North Sea. Cromer is the best-known locality, but it occurs also on other parts of the Norfolk coast, such as Great Yarmouth, as well as Southwold, Aldeburgh and Felixstowe in Suffolk, and as far south as Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex, whilst northwards it is not unknown in Yorkshire. On the other side of the North Sea, amber is found at various localities on the coast of the Netherlands and Denmark. On the shores of the Baltic it occurs not only on the German and Polish coast but in the south of Sweden, in Bornholm and other islands, and in southern Finland. Amber has indeed a very wide distribution, extending over a large part of northern Europe and occurring as far east as the Urals. Some of the amber districts of the Baltic and North Sea were known in prehistoric times, and led to early trade with the south of Europe through the Amber Road. Amber was carried to Olbia on the Black Sea, Massilia (today Marseille) on the Mediterranean, and Adria at the head of the Adriatic; and from these centres it was distributed over the Hellenic world.

Amber and certain similar substances are found to a limited extent at several localities in the United States, as in the green-sand of New Jersey, but they have little or no economic value. Middle Cretaceous amber has also been found in Ellsworth county, Kansas. It has little value for jewelry makers, but is very valuable to biologists. Unfortunately the source of this amber is currently under a manmade lake. A fluorescent amber occurs in the southern state of Chiapas in Mexico, and is used extensively to create eye-catching jewelery. Blue amber is recorded in the Dominican Republic. These Central American ambers are formed from the resins of legume trees (Hymenea) and not conifers.

Amber treatments

The famous Vienna amber factories which use pale amber to manufacture pipes and other smoking tools, apply a specific procedure when working amber: it is turned on the lathe and polished with whitening and water or with rotten stone and oil, the final lustre being given by friction with flannel. During the working a significant electrostatic charge is developed.

Cloudy unpolished amber, artificially illuminated

When gradually heated in an oil-bath, amber becomes soft and flexible. Two pieces of amber may be united by smearing the surfaces with linseed oil, heating them, and then pressing them together while hot. Cloudy amber may be clarified in an oil-bath, as the oil fills the numerous pores to which the turbidity is due. Small fragments, formerly thrown away or used only for varnish, are now utilized on a large scale in the formation of "ambroid" or "pressed amber". The pieces are carefully heated with exclusion of air and then compressed into a uniform mass by intense hydraulic pressure; the softened amber being forced through holes in a metal plate. The product is extensively used for the production of cheap jewelery and articles for smoking. This pressed amber yields brilliant interference colours in polarized light. Amber has often been imitated by other resins like copal and kauri, as well as by celluloid and even glass. True amber is sometimes coloured artificially.

Often amber (particularly with insect inclusions) is counterfeited using a plastic resin similar in appearance. A simple test (performed on the back of the object) consists of touching the object with a heated pin and determining if the resultant odor is of wood resin. If not, the object is counterfeit, although a positive test may not be conclusive owing to a thin coat of real resin. Often counterfeits will have a too perfect pose and position of the trapped insect.

Amber art and ornament

Amber was much valued as an ornamental material in very early times. It has been found in Mycenaean tombs; it is known from lake-dwellings in Switzerland, and it occurs with Neolithic remains in Denmark, whilst in England it is found with interments of the bronze age. A remarkably fine cup turned in amber from a bronze-age barrow at Hove is now in the Brighton Museum. Beads of amber occur with Anglo-Saxon relics in the south of England; and up to a comparatively recent period the material was valued as an amulet. It is still believed to possess a certain medicinal virtue.

Unpolished amber stones, in varying hues

Amber is extensively used for beads and other ornaments, and for cigar-holders and the mouth-pieces of pipes. It is regarded by the Turks as specially valuable, inasmuch as it is said to be incapable of transmitting infection as the pipe passes from mouth to mouth. The variety most valued in the East is the pale straw-coloured, slightly cloudy amber. Some of the best qualities are sent to Vienna for the manufacture of smoking appliances.

The Amber Room was a collection of chamber wall panels commissioned in 1701 for the king of Prussia, then given to Tsar Peter the Great. The room was hidden in place from invading Nazi forces in 1941, who upon finding it in the Cathrine Palace, disassembled it and moved it to Königsberg. What happened to the room beyond this point is unclear, but it may have been destroyed when the Russians burned the German fortification where it was stored. It is presumed lost. It was re-created in 2003 ^[10].

The Amber Room was reconstructed from the Kaliningrad amber.

See also

• List of types of amber
• List of minerals
• Ammolite
• Copal
• Dominican amber
• Spirit of amber
• Oil of amber
• Amber Road
• Amber Room

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Amber

1. ^ King, Rev. C.W. (1867). The Natural History of Gems or Decorative Stones. Camebridge (UK).  Amber Chapter, Online version
2. ^ Susie Ward Aber. Welcome to the World of Amber. Emporia State University. Retrieved on 2007-05-11.
3. ^ Origin of word Electron
4. ^ Assignment of vibrational spectra of labdatriene derivatives and ambers: A combined experimental and density functional theoretical study Manuel Villanueva-García, Antonio Martínez-Richa, and Juvencio Robles Arkivoc (EJ-1567C) pp 449-458 Online Article
5. ^ Langenheim, Jean (2003). Plant Resins: Chemistry, Evolution, Ecology, and Ethnobotany. Timber Press Inc.. ISBN 0-88192-574-8. 
6. ^ http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/museum/171online/PB171BMWPG1.html Benjamin M. Waggoner, Bacteria and protists from Middle Cretaceous amber of Ellsworth County, Kansas, from: PaleoBios, Volume 17, Number 1, Pages 20-26, July 13, 1996
7. ^ Scientist: Frog could be 25 million years old
8. ^ http://www.gplatt.demon.co.uk/whatis.htm
9. ^ How Products Are Made: Amber
10. ^ BBC report on Amber Room

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

• The World of Amber From the Earth Science Department of Emporia State University, Emporia, Kansas (Accessed 29 May 2005)
• Several dozen full text historical references on Amber Theophrastus, George Frederick Kunz, and special on Baltic Amber.
• Publications on amber inclusions
• http://www.webmineral.com/data/Amber.shtml
• http://www.mindat.org/min-188.html
• http://www.gemstone.org/gem-by-gem/english/amber.html

Common jewellery materials
Precious metals:	Gold · Silver (Sterling silver) · Platinum · Palladium
Gemstones:	Diamonds · Rubies · Emeralds · Sapphires · Amethyst · Opals · Topaz · Aquamarine · Tanzanite · Alexandrite
Others:	Amber · Pearls

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - rav, ravgul farve
adj. - rav-, ravgul

Nederlands (Dutch)
amber, ambersteen/ -kleur, amber-

Français (French)
n. - ambre
adj. - d'ambre, (Aut) orange (les feux), à l'orange

Deutsch (German)
n. - Bernstein, Amber, gelbe Ampel
adj. - bernsteinfarben, gelb

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (ορυκτολ.) ήλεκτρο (κν. κεχριμπάρι)
adj. - κεχριμπαρένιος

Italiano (Italian)
ambra, luce gialla del semaforo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - âmbar (m) (Quím.) (Geol.)
adj. - âmbar

Русский (Russian)
янтарь

Español (Spanish)
n. - ámbar
adj. - de color ámbar

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - bärnsten
adj. - bärnstensfärgad

中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
琥珀, 黄色, 琥珀色, 黄褐色, 琥珀色的, 琥珀的

中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 琥珀, 黃色, 琥珀色, 黃褐色
adj. - 琥珀色的, 琥珀的

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 호박, 호박 빛
adj. - 호박의, 호박 빛의

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 琥珀, こはく色
adj. - こはく色の, 黄色の

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) الكهرمان (صفه) اللون الكهرماني, كهرماني اللون وهو الأصفر الضارب الى الحمره‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮שרף-עצים מאובן ושקוף במקצת המשמש בתעשיית התכשיטים, ענבר, הצבע הצהוב שברמזור‬
adj. - ‮חום-צהבהב‬

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