News Nuggets

Newsletter of the Albuquerque Gem & Mineral Club

Rosemary Miller passed away on August 14^th. There will be a Memorial Service at the Newman Center on the UNM campus at 10:00 AM on Saturday, September 2^nd. Our deepest condolences to her husband Hank and their family.

The next great upcoming event will be in November. New Mexico Tech will host the New Mexico Mineral Symposium on November 11-12. There were over 200 attendees at last year's symposium and the numbers keep growing every year. There are dealers at the Super 8 motel at the north end of town and that's where everyone gathers on the evening of the 10^th to window shop and to purchase those "gotta have" specimens. We will have registration forms for this year's symposium at the September general meeting.

Our club election of new officers will also take place at the November meeting. I will select an election committee that will select a "recommended" slate of officers for 2007. The recommended slate will be published in the September News Nuggets. We are very seriously looking for a secretary, an editor, a second person to help with programs and a second person to help with field trips. Please call any current board member if you have questions regarding any position on the board in which you may be interested. The deadline is the end of October. Remember folks, this is a club and we need more than warm bodies once a month for a program and cookies. Help us continue to make the AGMC the success it already is.

-Orlando

President -- Orlando Garcia; Home phone: 345-0520; E-mail: jabog02@msn.com

VP-Membership & VP-Programs -- Kimberly Richie; Home phone: 296-8847; E-mail: cattrax55@wmconnect.com

Secretary & Junior Club -- Suzanne Seymour; Home phone: 877-3621; Email: suzannerox5@aol.com

Historian -- Dave Moats; Home phone: 892-8163; E-mail: beepbeep59@hotmail.com

Editor -- Paul Napolitano; Home phone: 856-2157; E-mail: tcot@spinn.net

Show Chair -- Paul Hlava; Home phone: 255-5478; E-mail: hpf5@qwest.net

VP - Programs -- Mike Sanders; Home phone: 256-1797; E-mail: mrsande@sandia.gov

Special Events -- Orlando Garcia; Home phone: 345-0520; E-mail: jabog02@msn.com

Past President -- Grant Kuck; Home phone: 323-1520; E-mail: none at the moment.

The Club Newsletter; News Nuggets exists to assist the membership in communications and to provide information on club activities. Contributions from all members are welcome on any information that will promote club activities or that would be of interest to club members. News Nuggets is scheduled to be mailed approximately one week prior to the monthly meeting. Mail news, articles or comments to: Paul Napolitano, Editor, 7304 Yorktown, NE, Albuquerque, NM 87109, or email to tcot@spinn.net.

The Albuquerque Gem & Mineral Club was organized on January 22, 1944. The club is a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement and enjoyment of the Earth Sciences and associated subjects. Its primary purpose is the exchange of information and the furtherance of knowledge of Mineralogy, Fossils, Geology, Rock Cutting and Gem Faceting and to stimulate interest in the development of these studies.

All Meetings are held at the NM Museum of Natural History, Albuquerque, NM. The general meeting is held on the 4^th Monday of the month (unless otherwise announced) at 7:30 p.m. The Junior Club meets at 6:30 p.m. prior to the general meeting. Board of Directors meetings are held at 7:30 pm on the first Monday of each month. (Call for location). The public is welcome to both meetings.

Being a member of the Albuquerque Gem and Mineral Club does not make you an official of the AGMC. This makes it inappropriate for any member to take on any responsibility or authority for any club activity without explicit instruction from the AGMC Board of Directors.

A hardy Thank You to the Bacas and to our tour guide Jerry Simmons. All 57 of us had a wonderful time. The day was warm with a little breeze; just lovely. Treasures galore, an outdoor excursion, wonderful 'rocky' people to hang out with, and the FOOD on the table!!! We couldn't have had a nicer day. I thank all those who called to cancel, which allowed all those on the waiting list to go, if they could.

The field trip for this month will take us up to central Colorado. We're going to be collecting at the Calumet Iron mine, in the scenic Arkansas valley, Chaffee county, Colorado. This is a contact metamorphic deposit (a skarn). The minerals that we can expect to find are Epidote, Uralite, Quartz, Magnetite, and a number of other more rare minerals will no doubt turn up. It will be interesting to study this mineral assemblage in comparison to what we will be finding on our San Pedro field trip. Both of these deposits are contact metamorphic in nature, but their assemblages are almost a complete opposite to each other; i.e., epidote is relatively rare at the San Pedro, but at the Calumet it is very common. Garnet at the San Pedro is very common, whereas at the Calumet it is rare. Interesting!

Also while we are up there, we can go to the Contin-Tail Show, which will be going from the 10^th thru the 13^th of August. This show is a lot of fun as there are a number of fellow collectors there and plenty of minerals, fossils etc, to see and buy.

The plan is for all of us to meet at the intersection of US 285 and SR 291 at 9 AM Saturday morning on the 12 of August. We will travel in mass to the mine. If you are running late, drive towards Salida on SR291 and take county road 156 follow it, it will turn into FR 175 after about 1.5 miles or so. Continue on 175 until you come to the intersection with FR 185. Head down a hill into a small valley. Stay on 185 and you will drive by a large quarry and head up into a canyon. In a short distance you'll see our vehicles parked on the side of the road. If you look to the east and up a very steep slope you'll see the mines.

How to get to the meeting point: The best way is to head up to Santa Fe on I-25 and take US 285 all the way up to Colorado. It's a very pleasant drive!

Places to stay: if you like, a number of us are going to be staying at the Angel of Shavano Campground. To get there head west on US50 for 6 1/2 miles and turn right onto CR 240 and travel for about 4 miles to the campgrounds. But, keep in mind there are a number of other sites and hotels in the area.

Other things to do while you're there:

Aug 10 thru the 15: Perseides meteor shower. Should be some great watching up there!

Aug 11: Collegiate Peaks forum Series: Jeremy Adams Discusses Cicero's Message in the 1^st Century at 7 PM in the Pinon Room in the Buena Vista Community Center.

Aug 12: Salida Aspen Concert: Rita Sloan and friends perform at the John Held Auditorium in Salida 7:30 PM. Box office opens 6:30, tickets are $10. Visit www.salidaaspenconcerts.org.

Aug 12: Cemetery tour: meet at Mt Olivet Cemetery at 5 PM where Alsina Dearheimer, Mother of Buena Vista, will introduce you to some colorful friends. $6, meet the McPhelemy's, Abner Wright and others!!!

Check out the mining museum up at Leadville, I've heard it's great.

Thanks to Amy Penn for finding all this info!

Hope to see you all there!

- Ron Boyd and Jeff Nekola

13-17--DENVER, COLORADO: Show, "Fall Colorado Mineral & Fossil Show"; Martin Zinn Expositions; Holiday Inn - Denver Central, 4849 Bannock St., intersection of I-25 and I-70; Wed. 10-6, Thu. 10-6, Fri. 10-6, Sat. 10-6, Sun. 10-5; free admission; 200 dealers from all over the world, free shuttle to shows at the Merchandise Mart; contact Martin Zinn Expositions, P.O. Box 665, Bernalillo, NM 87004-0665, fax (505) 867-0073; e-mail: MZ0955@aol.com; Web site: www.mzexpos.com.

15-17--DENVER, COLORADO: Show; Greater Denver Area Gem & Mineral Council; Denver Merchandise Mart Expo Hall, 451 E. 58th Ave.; Fri. 9-6, Sat. 10-6, Sun. 10-5; contact Martin Hannu, (303) 233-2516; e-mail: info@denvermineralshow.com; Web site: www.denvermineralshow.com.

21-24--McDERMITT, NEVADA: 3rd annual show, "Rockhound Rendezvous"; Community of McDermitt, Illyssa I. Fogel; Diamond A Motel, U.S. Hwy. 95; Thu. 9-4, Fri. 9-4, Sat. 9-4, Sun. 9-4; free admission; dealers, agates, jaspers, opals, petrified wood, jewelry, field trips; contact Illyssa I. Fogel, P.O. Box 437, McDermitt, NV 89421, (775) 532-8088; e-mail: lisa@diamondamotel.com; Web site: www.diamondamotel.com

August, 2006

From the devious mind of Paul Hlava

The Game Plan -- I will describe a mineral and you have to guess/decipher/research the name of the mineral and the answers to the other questions asked about uses, history, notable facts, etc. I expect the Top Guns in the club to be able to guess the name off the top of their heads. The learners will need a reference book or two. You will benefit most if you do not ask others for the answers but work it out for yourselves. When you have decided on the name you can compare notes with others or wait for the answers to be announced at the meetings or published in the News Nuggets. Good luck and have fun.

Last year I discussed minerals that are named for geographic localities. This year I thought I'd concentrate on minerals named for their chemistry. And this one is maybe even easier than last month's.

This month's MM is a pure element often found as euhedral, orthorhombic crystals in volcanic exhalations and bacterial reduction of sulfates in sediments. This mineral has a couple of indistinct cleavages and a conchoidal fracture, resinous luster, hardness of 1.5 to 2.5, and specific gravity of 2.05 - 2.09, Average = 2.06. Transparent to translucent, colors include Yellow, Yellowish brown, Yellowish gray, Reddish, Greenish.

Questions

What is the name of the mineral?

How would a Brit spell this name?

What is the origin of the name?

What is it used for?

What unusual properties does this mineral have?

Name a NM locality.

Name some other US localities.

Name some world-wide, world-class specimen localities.

What is the name of the mineral? Thorite.

What is the origin of the name? From its thorium content.

What is it used for? Source of thorium.

What unusual property does this mineral have? Radioactivity.

What common mineral is isomorphous with this one? Zircon.

By the way Ð bright orange colored thorites from Madagascar were originally named orangeite.

Name a NM locality. Ð Harding Pegmatite

Name some other US localities. Thomas Range, Utah, many places in the West - CO, AZ, NV, etc.

Name some world-wide, world-class specimen localities. Norway, Sweden, Madagascar, Ontario, Germany, ItalyÉ

• Paul Hlava 060810

The July club meeting was called to order just about on time. A warm welcome was extended to 10 visitors, guests, and new members. And a "good to see you" to the rest of us. The first order of business was a debriefing of the San Pedro Mine club picnic and collecting extravaganza. Jeff relayed that a good time was had by all and lots of fine material was collected. The potluck was up to the usual high standard and the weather was perfect. Ron Boyd announced that the next field trip would be to the Calumet Iron Mine near Salida, Colorado on August 12^th. Participants are to meet at the junction of US 285 and Co 291 at 9:00 AM. The field trip will coincide with the Contin-tail Show held in Buena Vista. Additional details and things to do in the area researched by Amy Penn will be posted in the News Nuggets. Ron and Jeff thanked Amy for all the organizing, shopping, and general negotiating that the picnic entailed. Three more cheers for you Amy!!! Dave Moats remembered that in years past that the Bacas had been given a super specimen by way of thanks for their hospitality and wondered if the same was done this year. It was explained that a speaker's fee was given to them this year in lieu of a specimen. Someone suggested that they be given a year's membership and this great idea met with solid support. September's field trip will be to the Zuni fluorite collecting area at the Section 21+27 Mines.

In further news on the collecting front: two items for the opal lovers. Opal has been reported near San Fidel, that's exit 100 on I-40 north to old 66 then east to San Fidel. Might just be worth a look-see. And for you silver pickers, "Danny the Yank" lately of Australia has been reported in the area and surely has many splendid stones for your perusal.

For the program portion of the meeting the second half of the Sweet Home Mine video was shown. Thanks in part to the general hue and cry the guys managed to begin the evenings showing with the spectacular segment in which the Alma King was revealed to the world for the first time since itsÕ emplacement 72 million years ago. The hue and cry, gasps, and moans were just as good as last time! WOW!

As the 1991 season opened they were using the "hang-up-the-drill" method to find vugs on the face they were working. It was working well enough to find the "Cash Flow" pocket, a gorgeous lining of quartz plates covered with ½-3/4" rhodochrosite crystals. This they removed by drilling a line of holes 4"x 61/2" deep around the opening and then using a splitter to connect the dots. Material from this pocket now graces the front of the Coors Mineral Hall at the Denver Museum of Science and Nature. Mapping and research continued thru '92 and '93 with indications that significant deposits tended to focus in areas of structural intersection. Work continued with Dean Misantoni, the mapper, working one area and the other crew working the Watercourse Vein, a structure that had been productive in 1925. By late season things were bleak, nothing lucrative having been recovered as yet. First blood went to the "Corner Pocket" team operating in the old Watercourse Vein in September, and this heartened the partners. Just as winter shut down was imminent, Dean's team found lifeblood in the form of a spectacular pocket now known as the "Coors Pocket". Ultimately all 3000 pieces of the find were reassembled as found, or nearly so, into a diorama at the Denver Museum. New expertise and new technologies, including a water-cooled diamond chainsaw, were brought to bear in this unprecedented re-creation of a deposit. And of course during this time the Collectors Edge lab team was busy cleaning and prepping the saleable material that kept things afloat as well. The year 1995 was a bust but by 1996 they had begun to better understand the geochemistry of the rhodochrosite depositional environment, and this helped the effectiveness of their prospecting. Really gemmy red crystals formed at higher temperatures. Fluid inclusion studies gave further data on the depositional environment and electron microprobe revealed the clues to the chemistry. The tetrahedrite crystal can accommodate either arsenic or antimony in the lattice. High temperature deposits had high arsenic and low antimony, low temperature deposits tended to have high antimony and low arsenic.

In the spring they found the "Strawberry pocket". Rhodochrosite mixed in with big purple fluorite. Their increasing understanding of the crystal chemistry and geochemistry gave them tools to map and predict the ÒrakeÓ of development. Fluorite raise in 1998 and the January 2, 2000 "Millenium Pocket" added new data and funding and by the end of 2000 they felt they understood the secret. Follow the "rake", that being a zone of some 30" through the fault zone. Results from this approach carried them into 2005 and included "NateÕs Pocket" that was removed with dynamite and screwdrivers. All this material being wrapped before careful removal to the Collector's Edge labs for trimming and cleaning focused the attention of Coloradans and culminated in an effort spearheaded by Platte Canyon High School students in having rhodochrosite being selected as the Colorado state mineral on April 17, 2002. Sadly there was an end to the deposit so the team reluctantly closed the mine in 2005. What a wondrous project the whole thing was!! How gratifying to see that aesthetics, good science, bootstrap engineering, and doggedness can meet the sometimes elusive bottom line in today's mining marketplace. Now here's one for the video library.

By the end of the show Paulina Inigo had the spread ready for the crowd who did the usual damage while catching up on news from club buddies, etc. Last months provider was slighted by me, so thanks for doing your part to both Paulina and Carolyn Wood.

I was glad to see that Dave Moats is getting some help with the Door Prize detail, [which begins early and ends late] from Jay Penn and Dave Smith. Thanks for stepping up guys!

Lots and lots and lots of happy winners.

- Suzanne Seymour

9 March 2006

When it comes to measuring the "hardness" of a material, most tests are distinctly low-tech and basically involve pressing a diamond tip into the surface and measuring the size of the dent produced. Now, however, physicists in the Czech Republic have developed a new way to predict the hardness of materials without going anywhere near a lab. The results, obtained from first-principles calculations alone, agree well with experimental data and could help scientists make harder materials (Phys. Rev. Lett. 96 085501).

Hardness is a measure of a material's resistance to being scratched or dented and is measured using various experimental techniques, including the Vicker's and Knoop tests. However, the values obtained often vary depending on the testing method -- the Knoop diamond, for example, is sharper than the Vicker's and gives a lower hardness. Indeed, experimental values of hardness can vary by more than 10% for the same material. Scientists have therefore been keen to devise a theoretical technique for predicting the hardness of a material with more certainty.

Three years ago, a team led by Faming Gao of Yanshan University in China took an important step towards this goal by developing a semi-empricial formula for the hardness of a material based on the length of the bonds between its components atoms, the number of electrons available for bonding, and the "ionicity", which is the degree to which each pair of atoms shares the electrons between bonds. (In "covalent" materials like silicon the electrons are shared equally, whereas in "ionic" materials one atoms takes over its neighbour's electrons entirely; "polar covalent" materials lie in-between.)

Simunek and Vackar have now taken this work a step further and devised a method for calculating the hardness of single crystals -- both covalent and ionic -- from first principles. Their trick is to introduce a new expression for hardness that describes the strength of a bond based on quantities inherently linked to the atomic structure of the material. Until now, scientists were not able to easily define hardness at the atomic scale.

Their new theory says that the hardness of an ideal single crystal is proportional to the bond strengths and to the number of bonds in a unit cell volume of the crystal. Using simple mathematics, Simunek and Vackar can then calculate the material's hardness. Using their equation, the researchers have also found an unexpected result that contradicts conventional wisdom: atoms surrounded by relatively few other atoms -- that is, those having a lower "co-ordination" number -- are harder than those surrounded by lots of other atoms.

"Our work will lead to a deeper understanding of hardness," Simunek told PhysicsWeb. "The approach will also tell materials scientists how to arrange atoms to make a hard structure for the first time." The team now hopes to develop a complete theory for metallic bonds too.

- www.Physicsweb.org

Danny The Yank