Hi everyone, this week, I will tell about what I am very curious about in science! The one thing I’ve always been wondering about is crystals and gemstones. Since I’m so interested, I researched and found some cool facts!

Some facts I found made me super surprised and awestruck. One fact I found was that the word crystal comes from the Greek krystallos, which means ice. Also, crystals are from the minerals family. All the grains of sand from the beach ar crystals! There are seven different shapes a crystal can be formed into which is: cubic, hexagonal, tetragonal, orthorhombic, monoclinic, and triclinic. Crystals are basically based on liquids cooling and starting to harden. Certain molecules in the liquid gather together as they try to become stable. When this happens, a  repeating pattern forms the crystal.

Now onto gemstones! These facts were so interesting and surprising too. Gemstones have attracted many humans over years and have been used for jewelry! These are 16 main types of gemstones. They are beryl, chrysoberyl, corundum, diamond, feldspar, garnet, jade, lazurite, olivine, opal, quartz, spinel, topaz, tourmaline, turquoise, and zircon.  Some gemstones have other minerals/gems in it. Lastly, there are two different categories of gemstones called “precious” and “semi-precious.” Diamonds, rubies, and sapphires are all under precious gemstones and amethysts, rose quartz and onyx, are all under semi-precious.

Kirt Edblom via Compfight

Armin S Kowalski via Compfight

Those are some facts about crystals and gemstones that I found very interesting! Here are the websites I got my information at:                                                                                                                            #1   #2  #3  #4

If you have any more questions, leave them down in the comment section down below! Thank You!!!

-hmskirac