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Post by Donnie's Rocky Treasures on Apr 12, 2010 16:44:28 GMT -5
Man, I just got to tell you I am having as much fun just seeing your pictures & sharing your excitement at being able to haul all that rock away that would have ended up being thrown away. That is a dream come true for someone who really digs rocks. You are really going to have a lot of fun figuring out what everything is & once you get started tumbling, cutting, grinding & polishing you are really going to get hooked! Keep showing us the pictures, please! This is quite exciting! BTW, that is some nice slag glass! Donnie
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chickpea
off to a rocking start
Member since April 2010
Posts: 7
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Post by chickpea on Apr 14, 2010 5:45:57 GMT -5
Wow! What an amazing collection, you are very lucky to have got it. When I was in high school I studied geology and one term a local collector died and bequeathed his collection of rocks and minerals to our school. Nothing like as much as you have here, but still a wide and varied collection.
The teachers thought it was great because they just set the students (we were 16-19 years old) to categorising the rocks in lessons for weeks on end while they stayed in the staff room smoking. I can't complain - I learned more practical geology in those few weeks (and had more fun) than in years of normal classes.
One boy in our class was older than the rest of us because he had already failed the exam and was starting over. We didn't look down on him for failing, we looked up to him for being older and therefore cooler than the rest of us. He had a unique way of identifying rocks - he claimed he could identify any sample by smashing two rocks together and sniffing them. He did this with great theatricality and then pronounced what the rock was. In fact, there were a limited number of different rocks we were required to identify for the course and it was pretty easy to "eyeball" them, they didn't really give us any tough stuff. This boy's approach of course went all to hell when we got our hands on the collection, but he still entertained us by his "banging rocks together and guess" technique.
Anyway we were all busy categorising the rocks when one boy found a boring grey rock with some yellow crystals in a wooden box lined with lead. This didn't trip any alarm bells in his head for some reason, and he went about trying to identify the sample in the usual ways - hardness, streak, acid and so on. I know he licked it because I saw him, and he also had it in his trouser pockets for a while. I don't remember is "rock-smacker" tried his technique but I wouldn't be surprised. I realised the lead-lined box meant something and looked up radioactive ores, and found something very similar.
Somebody went over to the physics lab and the lab technician came with a geiger counter. It was quite a good one, you had to calibrate it first with a sample of known activity. Handling the sample with tongs, not his bare hands, the lab tech pointed the receiver at the sample and fiddled with the dials until the geiger counter was going "tick - tick - tick". He then pointed it at the piece of ore and it went "CRACKLESPLUTTERFIZZ" - off the scale. Need a more active sample. SO he repeated the procedure with the next most active sample - "tick - tick - tick". Try the ore - "CRACKLESPLUTTERFIZZ" - off the scale. This went on, and even on the highest sample the lab tech had, the activity of the ore was off the scale. (probably nothing truly major, you don't need to be able to measure powerful radioactivity in a high school physics lab, in fact you need really sensitive counters to be able to measure the tiny amounts of radiation coming off the feeble samples high school students are permitted to muck about with, but it made an impression on us).
At this point he ordered the evacuation of the geology department. A short while later a van turned up at the school and men in haz mat suits took the ore away. They also took the boy who had licked it and had it in his pockets away for medical tests, but he was fine. The following week we returned to normal lessons.
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ErniE
starting to shine!
Member since April 2010
Posts: 40
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Post by ErniE on Apr 17, 2010 0:24:49 GMT -5
awesome.
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Post by Roller on Apr 21, 2010 23:11:53 GMT -5
Hey I am not so great at identification but I would suggest putting the same post under some of the other boards on here ... They get alot more views ... And I am sure in no time you will get some answers as everyone here has alot of rock knowledge ....Also you could do a post on the other sister site dirty rockhounds... I will tell you that you have some amazing stuff there ... I would start trading/selling and get some lapidary equipment ...
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