News Nuggets

Newsletter of the Albuquerque Gem & Mineral Club

It seems like it was just yesterday that we were planning our 2006 year back in January. The year has gone very well and we have some great events still to come. The summer picnic will be at the San Pedro mine on July 22^nd with a limit of 75 people and no children under 10 permitted. This trip is booked solid with a waiting list but you can still call Amy Penn at 883-4195 to maybe get on that waiting list.

Our next immediate concern is the upcoming New Mexico Sate Fair in September. I will have a signup sheet at the July 24 general meeting. The club staffs 2 tables in the Creative Arts building every weekend during the fair. We will have about 1,500 specimens, polished samples and club literature as give aways. Staffing the club area is great fun and a good way to meet other club members. The fair will provide staffers with parking passes and entry tickets. I will mail these passes to volunteers prior to their staffing times. Please help. We get new members all year long from our exposure at the fair.

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

Co-VP-Field Trips -- Ron Boyd; Home phone: 262-0053; Email: rgb417@earthlink.net

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

Treasurer -- Amy Penn; Home phone: 883-4195; Email: el.chivo.viejo@earthlink.net

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 Ð 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 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.

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 rarer 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, where as 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 10th thru the 13th 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.

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

18-20--LAKE GEORGE, COLORADO: Show; Lake George Gem & Mineral Club; Hwy. 24, 38 miles west of Colorado Springs; Fri. 9-5, Sat. 9-5, Sun. 9-5; free admission; contact Richard Parsons, (303) 838-8859; e-mail: tazaminerals@att.net.

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

This month's trip is going to take us up to the Harding Mine in Taos Co. The trip is going to be on the 1^st of July. We are planning of meeting at the intersection of the dirt road to the mine and State road 75. The dirt road is on your right heading east. We'll meet there at 9 AM.

To get there head north from Albuquerque on I-25. Take the Santa Fe bypass SR599. This will take you to US285 and stay on it until you are in Espanola at which point take SR 68 (the Taos highway). Stay on 68 until you come to SR 75, on your right. Take this road through Dixon and drive about 5+ miles to the meeting point.

There were about 30 members that went on this trip. We meet at 9 in the morning and were treated to two great talks by Ray DeMark and Jesse Kline. Ray gave a talk and a show of what types of minerals that we could hope to find and Jesse gave an overview of the geology of the region. Both Jeff and I want to thank them for helping out. All in all, I think everyone had a great time and learned a lot.

- Ron Boyd and Jeff Nekola

We had 11 Juniors who learned from Linda Katonak about the earth's time line. It was an enlightening graph of activity from the time earth began to today. Linda had many pictures of these activities, first dinosaurs, first flower, first man, etc. that the Juniors placed on the time line. Even though the dinosaurs were years and years ago, they are just a small portion of the activity that has happened in the earth's last 'few' years.

-Amy Penn

July, 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.

The June AGMC was called to order by past President Grant Kuck at 7:40pm. The small delay allowed the Juniors to trek across the street from their meeting in the Annex to join us for the showing of the Sweet Home video that was the evenings program. Grant extended the traditional warm welcome to the Juniors and their parents, visitors form out of state clubs, veteran collectors checking out the social aspect of our often solitary hobby, and guests of members. Jeff Nekola announced the next field trip to the world famous Harding Mine. Attendees will meet on the road to the mine east of Dixon on the road to the site at 9:00am Saturday July 1^st. Jesse Kline has been tapped to give a talk on pegmatites and the history of the mine. The picnic/collecting/tailgate sale at the San Pedro Mine set for July 22^nd will be limited to 75 people [none under 10 years old] by site manager Jerry Simmons. A sign-up sheet was passed and filled up before it made the back rows. Fifteen or more folks are on the backup list so if you're signed up and must cancel please let Ron, Jeff, Amy, or any Board member know so the eager and hopeful backup listers might have a chance to go. Directions to the meeting place at the intersection of Hwy 14 and 344 at the stated meeting time of 8:30 will be in the News Nuggets. Once the group has entered the mine property the gates will be locked so don't be late. And once on site ground rules MUST BE FOLLOWED or we will not be welcomed back. Period.

19 July 2006

A question that has been around since the time of Aristotle -- what shape is a pebble? -- has now been solved by physicists in France and the US. Douglas Durian of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues in Strasbourg say that a pebble is "a nearly round object with a near-Gaussian distribution of curvatures". All pebbles, regardless of their original shape, end up with a similar shape that depends solely on how the pebble was eroded over time. The results could help geologists determine the history of a pebble simply by looking at its geometry (Phys. Rev. Lett. 97 028001).

Most attempts to describe the shape of a pebble have involved measuring the "aspect ratios" -- that is, the ratio of the longest to the shortest axis -- of pebbles. However, such methods cannot distinguish one shape from another and do not give geologists any idea about the erosion processes that led to the creation of the pebble. Geologists are interested in such processes because it would let them work out if, say, a layer of rock containing that pebble was formed from a lake, a river, an ocean shore or a desert.

In their experiment, the France-US team simulated erosion in the lab with artificial pebbles made of 5-mm thick slabs of clay that had been moulded into various shapes, such as squares, triangles and other polygons. The researchers took photos of these pebbles and looked at how the shape of the pebbles changed as they tumbled around in a spinning metal pan. They found that once the corners had been eroded away, the pebble reached a nearly round shape that progressively got smaller in size. Moreover, the final shapes of all the pebbles were similar and therefore only depend on the erosion process itself say the scientists.

According to group member Carlos Marques from the University of Strasbourg, he and his colleagues have now found a mathematical tool that can "decode" flat pebble shapes and link these to the erosion process the pebbles underwent -- regardless of what shape they originally had.

- www.Physicsweb.org

Ray DeMark will be discussing Part 2 of our cleaning, preparing and identifying items in your personal mineral collections. Juniors, please bring your collection journals.

We are making a list of club property and inventory. If anyone has any club property in their possession, please let us know so we can complete our list.

Thanks.

Sweet Home Mine Video

The presentation this month will be part 2 of the excellent video presentation about the rhodochrosite (manganese carbonate) specimen recovery project at the Sweet Home Mine, located high in the Colorado mountains near the small town of Alma, Colorado. Collectors Edge Minerals, Inc produced this video. They are the company that has been engaged in a commercial specimen recovery operation at the mine for approximately 10 years and was shut down last year. The video describes the history and geology of this mine, and explains the exploration techniques used to determine the potential location of crystal pockets, and includes the use of high-quality computer graphics. The discovery of, and innovative procedures used to extract the very valuable rhodochrosite specimens are also illustrated and discussed. This is an 80-minute video presentation, so our plan is to show the first 40 minutes of it at the June 22^nd meeting, and the final 40 minutes will be shown at the July 26^th meeting.