Quartz is the second most famous, abundantly found crystalline mineral present on the earth’s crust. It is hard and composed of (SiO2) silicon dioxide, also known as silica. Quartz can occur in almost all possible mineral environments.
The name ‘quartz’ is a German word. The chemical formation of sio2 is as the atoms present link together in a continuous framework of silicon-oxygen tetrahedra sio4. Here it shares each oxygen atom with two tetrahedra. This results in the formation of the chemical formula of silicon dioxide (SiO2).
There are two forms of quartz, named alpha-quartz and beta-quartz. Beta-quartz is high in temperature as compared to alpha-quartz. Many range names are there for quartz than any other mineral. There are several varieties of quartz that are presently known as gemstones.
Quartz is abundant in igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks. And it’s resistant to chemical and mechanical weathering. The durability of quartz makes it dominant among all the minerals found on the river, wilderness sand, mountain tops, seasides, etc.
Being one of the most commonly used minerals with different varieties, it’s also used for making jewellery, carvings, and for many other purposes. LESSO Quartz Stone is a great variety of stones.
On Mohs scale of hardness, quartz defines a value of 7. It’s a qualitative method of defining the hardness of a material.
COMPOSITION OF QUARTZ
SiO2
Si=46.7%, O=53.3%.
HOW TO DIAGNOSE QUARTZ
One can diagnose quartz by its crystal form, conchoidal fracture, glassy lustre, and hardness. We can distinguish it from calcite by the amount of hardness.
There are some similar species like lechatelierite, etc.
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF QUARTZ
We can also diagnose quartz based on its physical properties. Quartz is chemically classified as silicate. It occurs in almost every colour. Some common colours are grey, white, purple, brown, yellow, green, pink, etc. its streak is colourless. One can say it is harder than the streak plate. It possesses vitreous lustre.
Quartz is transparent to translucent when it comes to diaphaneity. It typically breaks with a conchoidal fracture. Thus, there is no cleavage.
Specific gravity varies from 2.6 to 2.7. The shape of the crystal is hexagonal. There are several uses of quartz like making glass, foundry sand, gemstones, abrasive, hydraulic fracturing proppants, etc.
OPTICAL PROPERTIES OF QUARTZ
Few physical and optical properties of quartz are similar. Apart from these are crystal habit, cleavage, optic sign, refractive indices, max birefringence, distinguishing features, etc.
Quartz has crystals that are prismatic hexagonal with a horizontally straight face. This appears dry at times. The optic sign of quartz is uniaxial (+). Refractive indices in omega are 1.544, and epsilon is 1.553.
The Max birefringence of quartz is 0.009. We can distinguish quartz from others by looking at its low relief, checking whether it is uniaxial or not, and its low birefringence.
OCCURRENCE OF QUARTZ CRYSTAL
Those rocks that have an excess amount of silica, such as rhyolite, granite, and pegmatite, quartz is an important constituent of these rocks. Quartz occurs in metamorphic rocks. It occurs in the form of schists and gneisses. Although it only forms the mineral of quartzites. It is the most common gangue mineral. When flint gets a deposit with chalk on the seafloor, it forms. Beds of limestones might be replaced by solutions that have silica with granular cryptocrystalline quartz, also known as chert. These rock crystals are present in many areas like Japan, Brazil, the alps, etc.
VARIETY OF QUARTZ
There are many types of quartz stones present on earth. One of these is LESSO Quartz stone.
It is one of the imp products of (CHINA LESSO) China Lesso Group Holdings Limited. License Technology Co., Ltd runs this in Sichuan. There is the use of quartz in many areas like shopping malls, star hotels, exhibitions, airports, etc. it can cover large areas without variation, due to which we consider it as high-quality stone. In addition, it is environmental- friendly also, which helps in protecting the environment and saves energy.
CONCLUSION
For critical zones, quartz is important due to its distribution and composition. It is one of the last minerals to get dissolved. This is because it’s resistant to weathering.
If you want to build something like a building or even something small as a jewellery piece, you can go for quartz stone.
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