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smoky quartz

 
Dictionary: smoky quartz
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n.
A transparent or semitransparent brown or gray to nearly black variety of quartz, used as a gemstone. Also called cairngorm.


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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: smoky quartz
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Common, coarse-grained variety of quartz that ranges in colour from nearly black through smoky brown. No distinct boundary exists between smoky and colourless quartz. Its abundance causes it to be worth considerably less than either amethyst or citrine. Heating bleaches the stone, the colour sometimes passing through yellow; these yellow pieces are often sold as citrine.

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WordNet: smoky quartz
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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a smoky yellow or brown quartz
  Synonym: cairngorm

Wikipedia: Smoky quartz
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Smoky quartz

Smoky quartz or smokey quartz is a brown to black variety of quartz caused through the natural (or artificial) irradiation of aluminium-containing rock crystal.[1]

Contents

Varieties

Morion from Brazil

Morion

A very dark brown to black opaque variety is known as morion. Morion is the German, Danish, Spanish and Polish synonym for smoky quartz.[2]

Cairngorm

Cairngorm is a variety of smoky quartz crystal found in the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland. It usually has a smokey yellow-brown colour, though some specimens are a grey-brown.

Like other quartz gems, it is a silicon dioxide crystal, with a small amount of ferric oxide impurity which gives it the characteristic colour.

It is used in Scottish jewellery and as a decoration on kilt pins and the handles of sgian dubhs (anglicised: skean dhu). The largest known cairngorm crystal is a 23.6 kg (52 pound) specimen kept at Braemar Castle.

Morion from Poland

Morion from Ukraina

Another example of smoky quartz

See also

References

  1. ^ http://www.mindat.org/show.php?id=3689 Smoky Quartz on Mindat
  2. ^ http://www.mindat.org/min-6270.html Morion on Mindat
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Silica minerals
Crystalline
Cryptocrystalline
Amorphous
Miscellaneous
Notable varieties
Amethyst · Ametrine · Citrine · Milky quartz · Rose quartz · Smoky quartz · Shocked quartz
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Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Smoky quartz".  Read more