Sunday, May 29, 2016

Lady Sattjeni 's tomb discovered

http://www.sciencealert.com/the-tomb-of-one-of-the-most-important-women-in-ancient-egypt-has-just-been-unearthed

Here's an article about Lady Sattjeni, she was the daughter of a prince and the mother of two of the most powerful governors in the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. 

Aristotle's Tomb Discovered - archaeology news

https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/a90f2891-69b0-39ae-83f0-496fe4bcf88b/ss_archaeologists-think.html?nhp=1

Check out this article I found on yahoo news about aristotle's Tomb. 

Monday, May 23, 2016

A daytrip to the Rossville, PA roadcut - Malachite and Azurite occurence

After reading about a roadcut in Rossville, PA discovered in the 1970s online and in a book called 'Rockhounding Pennsylvania and New Jersey' by Robert Beard (ISBN: 9780762780938), some friends and I decided to make the drive and check it out. 

The occurence was discovered when the road was widened, and has since been heavily picked through by collectors and passers by.

We set out a few weeks ago, when there was a break in the rain here in central Pennsylvania.  The location was easy to find, it's in York County, PA.  From I-83, take exit 35 and head west on PA 177 towards Gifford Pinchot State Park.  Continue on PA 177 for approximately 9.1 miles to Rossville.  Turn north onto PA 74 in Rossville.  Continue north for approx. 0.7 miles and look East (to the right) for the roadut.

NOTE:  The roadcut is considered by many to be 'unsafe' to enter, please use common sense and caution when exploring this area.

The spot was easy to find.  My friend Donnie and I immediately climbed in the hole, and after a bit of moderate chiseling, yielded some decent pieces of malachite-coated matrix.  I was a bit disappointed that the spot was so heavily worked, as I had hoped to find some Azurite (I love the stuff!) - but overall, we left satisfied with our adventure for the day.  I would recommend a visit to this spot for anyone local enough to make the trip.  You may not bring much home with you, but its amazing to see the geology of the area in a cut like this.  I enjoyed myself.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Mineral streak explained

The streak (powder color) of a mineral is the color of the powder that is produced when it’s dragged across an un-weathered surface, like unglazed porcelain. Unlike the obvious color of a mineral, which in most minerals can vary considerably, the trail made  up if the finely ground powder has a consistent color, making it an important diagnostic tool in rock and mineral identification. If no streak seems to be made, the mineral's streak is considered to be white or colorless. Streak can be particularly important as a diagnostic for opaque and solid colored material, and less useful for stuff like silicate minerals, most of which will have a white streak or sometimes too hard to powder easily.  When a specimen is dragged to produce a streak, it is broken into randomly oriented microscopic crystals, so small impurities don’t much affect the absorption of light, which is what can make solid minerals appear different colors on the same specimen.  The surface across which the mineral is dragged is called a "streak plate," usually made of unglazed porcelain tile. The unglazed underside of a porcelain bowl or vase or the back of a glazed tile will work. Sometimes a streak is more easily or accurately described by comparing it with the "streak" made by another streak plate. In case of harder minerals, the color of the powder can be determined by filing or crushing with a hammer a small sample, which is then usually rubbed on a streak plate. Most minerals that are harder have an unhelpful white streak.  Some minerals leave a streak similar to their natural color, like lazurite. Other minerals leave surprising colors, like fluorite, which always has a white streak, although it appears in purple, blue, yellow, or green crystals. Hematite, which is black, leaves a red streak which accounts for its name, which comes from the Greek word "haima," which means "blood." Galena, which is similar in appearance to hematite, is easily distinguished by its gray streak.

Monday, May 16, 2016

What is a content writer?

What is a website content writer??

In the early 1990s the World Wide Web spread throughout the world. With it came the ability for businesses to represent themselves through a website. Later came search engines like Yahoo, Google, and Bing. Their goal was to categorize information found on the internet and present it to those searching for it. This information is known as web content.

Content writing services came about as a result of the demand made by search engines for credible and well-organized information. Content writers write the company's desired words in a manner that is consistent with and aligns with the company's goals.

A web or website content writer specializes in providing fresh, relevant content for websites and blogs.  Because every web site has a specific 'target audience' - each requires a different type and level of content. The content should contain words (key words) that attract and retain users on a website;  Your content should be relevant to the topic(s)/theme of the site, and easy for your followers to read.

Content developers may also be search engine optimization specialists, or Internet marketing professionals. High quality, unique content is what search engines are looking for and content development specialists therefore have a very important role to play in the search engine optimization process.

Currently the web content is no longer restricted to text, but has expanded to engulf other audio visual media. This includes video clips, presentations and a host of other interactive forms which can be picked up by the search engines. Content owners are also increasingly relying on content protection networks to check on plagiarism and achieve a greater assurance that their content remains unique and unduplicated on the web.

Content developers are specialized web site developers who have content generation skills such as graphic design, multimedia development, professional writing, and documentation. They can integrate content into new or existing web sites without using information technology skills such as script language programming and database programming.

Content developers or technical content developers can also be technical writers who produce technical documentation that helps people understand and use a product or service. This documentation includes online help, manuals, white papers, design specifications, developer guides, deployment guides, release notes, etc.

Here are some examples of things content writer may work with:

Article writing
Blog writing
Press release writing
Web page content writing
Copywriting
Product description writing
Technical writing
Business writing

Friday, May 13, 2016

What is quartz??

What is Quartz??

Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in the earths crust, after feldspar.  Tere are many different varieties of quartz, several of which are semi-precious gemstones. 

Major varieties of quartz

Chalcedony - Cryptocrystalline quartz and moganite mixture. The term is generally only used for white or lightly colored material. Otherwise more specific names are used.

Agate - Multi-colored, banded chalcedony, semi-translucent to translucent

Onyx - Agate where the bands are straight, parallel and consistent in size.

Jasper - Opaque cryptocrystalline quartz, typically red to brown

Aventurine - Translucent chalcedony with small inclusions (usually mica) that shimmer.

Tiger's eye - Fibrous gold to red-brown colored quartz, exhibiting chatoyancy.

Rock crystal - Clear, colorless

Amethyst - Purple, transparent

Citrine - Yellow to reddish orange to brown, greenish yellow

Prasiolite - Mint green, transparent

Rose quartz Pink, translucent, may display diasterism

Rutilated quartz - Contains acicular (needle-like) inclusions of rutile

Milky quartz - White, translucent to opaque, may display diasterism

Smoky quartz - Brown to gray, opaque

Carnelian - Reddish orange chalcedony, translucent

Dumortierite quartz - Contains large amounts of dumortierite crystals

Pure quartz, traditionally called rock crystal or clear quartz, is colorless and transparent or translucent, and has often been used for hardstone carvings, such as the Lothair Crystal. Common colored varieties include citrine, rose quartz, amethyst, smoky quartz, milky quartz, and others.

The most important distinction between types of quartz is that of macrocrystalline and the microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline varieties . The cryptocrystalline varieties are either translucent or mostly opaque, while the transparent varieties tend to be macrocrystalline.

Chalcedony is a cryptocrystalline form of silica consisting of fine intergrowths of both quartz, and its monoclinic polymorph moganite.  Other opaque gemstone varieties of quartz, or mixed rocks including quartz are agate, carnelian or sard, onyx, heliotrope, and jasper.

Amethyst

Amethyst is a popular form of quartz that ranges from a bright to dark or dull purple color. The world's largest deposits of amethysts can be found in Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Russia, France, Namibia and Morocco. Sometimes amethyst and citrine are found growing in the same crystal. It is then referred to as ametrine. An amethyst is formed when there is iron in the area where it was formed.

Citrine

Citrine is a variety of quartz whose color ranges from a pale yellow to brown due to ferric impurities. Natural citrines are rare; most commercial citrines are heat-treated amethysts or smoky quartzes. However, a heat-treated amethyst will have small lines in the crystal, as opposed to a natural citrine's cloudy or smokey appearance. It is nearly impossible to tell cut citrine from yellow topaz visually, but they differ in hardness. Brazil is the leading producer of citrine, with much of its production coming from the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The name is derived from Latin citrina which means "yellow" and is also the origin of the word "citron". Sometimes citrine and amethyst can be found together in the same crystal, which is then referred to as ametrine. Citrine has been referred to as the "merchant's stone" or "money stone", due to a superstition that it would bring prosperity.

Rose quartz

Rose quartz is a type of quartz which exhibits a pale pink to rose red hue. The color is usually considered as due to trace amounts of titanium, iron, or manganese, in the massive material. Some rose quartz contains microscopic rutile needles which produces an asterism in transmitted light. Recent X-ray diffraction studies suggest that the color is due to thin microscopic fibers of possibly dumortierite within the massive quartz.

Additionally, there is a rare type of pink quartz (also frequently called crystalline rose quartz) with color that is thought to be caused by trace amounts of phosphate or aluminium. The color in crystals is apparently photosensitive and subject to fading. The first crystals were found in a pegmatite found near Rumford, Maine, USA and in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Smokey quartz

Smokey quartz is a gray, translucent version of quartz. It ranges in clarity from almost complete transparency to a brownish-gray crystal that is almost opaque. Some can also be black.

Milky quartz

Milk quartz or milky quartz is the most common variety of crystalline quartz. The white color is caused by minute fluid inclusions of gas, liquid, or both, trapped during crystal formation making it of little value for optical and quality gemstone applications.

Artificial Quartz

Some varieties of quartz are not naturally occurring. For example, some clear quartz crystals can be treated using heat or gamma-irradiation to induce color where it would not otherwise have occurred naturally. Susceptibility to such treatments depends on the location from which the quartz was mined.

Prasiolite, an olive colored material, is produced by heat treatment; natural prasiolite has also been observed in Lower Silesia in Poland. Although citrine occurs naturally, the majority is the result of heat-treated amethyst (article about citrine coming).Another popular stone, Carnelian, is widely heat-treated to deepen its color.

Because natural quartz is often twinned, synthetic quartz is produced for use in industrial purposes. Large, flawless, single crystals are synthesized in an autoclave (sort of like a big pressure cooker) via the hydro thermal process; This is the same method used to create synthetic emerals.

Like other crystals, quartz may be coated with metal vapors to give it an attractive sheen. (Aura Quartz)