#pseudomorph

[geologyin-blog]

Natural Azurite pseudomorph, Kamenushinskoe Cu deposit, Salairsky mine, Guryevsky area, Kemerovo Oblast, Russia

Photo: @South_Siberian_Minerals

[srlgemstone]

Pseudomorph Tube Agate

Like little memory chambers in the brain. It's a marvelous pattern.

[reddpenn]

My favorite rock out of my (tiny) rock collection is a malachite sample. I would commit many crimes for a chunk of azurite though! Do you have any samples of either?

Here is my best malachite!

This piece is a pseudomorph, or "false form," a mineral taking the shape of a different mineral!

It started out as a cluster of azurite crystals. Over time, the azurite turned into malachite! This is something that can happen to azurite which is exposed to the air over long periods of time. It's not very chemically stable, and it reacts with moisture in the air to become the much more stable malachite - which chemically speaking is pretty much the exact same mineral but with way more hydrogen molecules. The malachite replaced the azurite perfectly, even preserving the exact shape of its crystals! Isn't that cool?!

As for azurite, this big sparkly specimen is my best piece of that!

[charyou-tree]

Girl, pseudomorph after Boy.

[ghminerals]

Quartz, iridescent rainbow pyrite, calcite pseudomorph after fluorite, Nikolaerskiy mine, Dalnegorsk, Russia 2.75 inch. See video and details here

https://etsy.me/42cDZkQ

[toyastales]

Geology Rocks: Azurite Pseudomorph

https://toyastales.blogspot.com/2024/09/geology-rocks-azurite-pseudomorph.html

[clottedscream]

you mentioned in the chat of a jello stream that you disliked how much fantasy magic crystals were shaped like Quartz. are there any specific crystal shapes you think are underutilized in fantasy?

I always like it when i see a nice beryl-or-andalusite-esque columnar crystal, or something botryoidal or acicular in a way that it makes little pom-pom shapes. And dogtooth (scalenohedral) crystals are a nice way to have that classic spiky shape without going quartz about it. But there's a whole entire world of weird and unique crystal shapes out there to base your fantasy crystals on, and I can't show off every possible shape that a crystal can come in with just one post. Pretty much every shape that a crystal can be is underutilized in comparison to the quartz shape.

the big thing that gets me about the "oops, all giant quartz clusters" method of designing fantasy crystals for your fictional world is that the shape a quartz crystal comes in, even though it's seen as like, the ubiquitous crystal shape that we think of all crystals as being, is actually very specific to quartzes!!!!

This is a figure from the mindat.org page on quartz. the top three shapes (a, b, and c) should be very familiar images to you! These are the most common shapes that crystals will be in fictional media. They're also three idealized crystal habits of QTZ - normal (prismatic), trigonal (prismatic), and pseudo-hexagonal (prismatic).

That's a lot of long words, but it all boils down to the describing geometry of a quartz crystal, and the geometry of its atomic structure.

QTZ is made of polymerized silicate, which, again, sounds fancy, but a polymer is just a long chain of many smaller molecules, and silicate is just the common term for the molecule SiO4. Silicate is a tetrahedron shaped molecule, meaning it's a pyramid with a square shaped base. A QTZ unit cell is made of a chain (a polymer) of silicate molecules linked together.

Here, we use unit cell to mean the simplest repeating building block in a larger pattern. like, say, if you build a giant lego cube out of all identical cube shaped legos, each cube shaped lego represents a unit cell of that giant cube. But QTZ unit cells aren't cube shaped. They're rhombohedrons- ie, 3d shapes where each face is a rhombus.

and if you stack a lot of rhombuses next to each other, they form a hexagon.

So when all the little unit cells of QTZ fit together, their ultimate shape is going to be hexagonal.

Quartz are not the only hexagonal mineral. Calcite famously also has a rhombus shaped unit cell. In mineralogy terms, this is called having trigonal symmetry- tri for three, as in the three rhombuses it takes to make a hexagon, or the three planes of symmetry a rhombus has.

But calcite doesn't form in in those tall prisms that terminate in pointy pyramid shapes made up of isosceles triangles or pentagons. It sometimes forms in dogtooth crystals, but dogtooth crystal faces are scalene, and they don't have that long prism body with a pyramid at the top like an endcap- they're spikes all the way to the base. Why is that? Why is quartz different from other trigonal minerals? why are its crystals weird like that?

Well, theres a lot of reasons, but one major one is that on top of being made of rhombohedrons, Quartz is ALSO made of helixes!

Thats right. Quartz has TWO fundamental patterns happening in its lattice. At the same time!

You can see by the overlayed yellow rhombohedrons in the figure above that each rhombus-y building block of QTZ fits together into a helix-shaped chain. QTZ forms in helixes because each of the basic silicate (SiO4) molecules in QTZ is sharing two of its oxygens with the other silicates its connected to. Because each block of the helix chain is made of a rhombus, when you stack those helix chains all next to each other to get a big quartz lattice, those chains make a hexagonal net. But helixes are also chiral, meaning they have a handedness to them- they can mirror each other and still be non-superimposable, like human hands.

To get the scope on why this chirality makes a difference to the structure of quartz, lets compare it to another mineral with trigonal symmetry, the aforementioned Calcite. If you could see atoms, this is what a chunk of calcite mineral would look like to you:

nice and simple, right? That's a very normal looking rhombus. everything slots together in a very straightforwardly rhombus-y way.

Now let's look at quartz.

ough.

When you combine these two features of QTZ geometry, the rhombus/trigonal symmetry and the helix shaped network of interlocking molecules, you get a pretty unique structure, which leads it to grow in very unique shapes when it gets bigger- hexagonal prisms with many interlocking chiral faces, terminating in those striking pyramid points composed of isosceles triangles.

That all sounds pretty cool right? it sounds like quartz is a really striking and unique and beautiful phenomenon of geometry, right? so why would I be annoyed? why would I be annoyed that a fantasy crystal has that unique shape? BECAUSE THAT SHAPE MEANS THE MINERAL IS QUARTZ.

Do you understand now? Out of all the possible permutations of different shapes a crystal can grow into, QUARTZ IS KIND OF THE ONLY FUCKING GUY THAT DOES THAT PARTICULAR SHAPE! nobody is out there doing it the way my guy quartz is doing it! So much so, in fact, THAT THIS IS THE ENTRY ON MINDAT FOR IDENTIFYING QUARTZ:

BY EYE.

QUARTZ IS ONE OF THE ONLY MINERALS YOU CAN ID BY EYE.

So, when you designed your mystical blue glowing crystal that has the power to harness a wizard's mana or whatever the fuck? And you picked that shape for it to be?

That means it's not enchantenite, or lunarite, or or whatever the fuck you want to call it. It's quartz. it's just quartz. your lack of creativity and unwillingness to do anything other than the most basic, recognizable shape for your fantasy crystal has all but guaranteed it. Maybe start worldbuilding what trace elements in that otherwise extremely fucking normal quartz you have there cause it to glow.

Because you picked the one shape that basically only quartz can be!

Congratulations!

enjoy your magical silicon dioxide, you piece of shit.

[dogtoling]

i'm retiring how the fuck are you supposed to explain Magic Floating Ink Fist

[geologyin-blog]

Prophecy Stones(Goethite Pseudomorph after Marcasite) from the White Desert in Egypt

This means that goethite has replaced marcasite , but the resulting goethite retains the external shape or crystal form of the original marcasite

📹: Coloradogemworks

Alexander Walker

[srlgemstone]

The kind that you can get lost in the details as you get closer. A beauty that can encompass many art forms, from cubism to graffiti and even abstract expressionist.

3D Pseudomorph Agate

[very-lucky]

Some more things that I forgot.

- when you’re crafting or cooking, the ingredients come from any chest you have (unless you lock the chest)

- There’s an extensive skill tree that unlocks so many useful magical things that make the game so much better and more engaging with every unlock. Including: the ability the scatter seeds more efficiently, the ability for crops to retain water to the next day, the ability to make any cooked dish as a universally liked dish, etc.

- The collectibles and rewards for the collectibles in the museum are good. There’s whole beautiful furniture sets to unlock and it makes me so excited to fill the museum. The museum is not (yet?) able to be explored though.

- You can breed animals and get different, rarer variants by breeding them. A lot are based off of real variants of animals, so the variations are unique to each animal. And one of the animals you can have is a capybara. I just think that’s awesome. The breeding mechanics are also not complicated. You can inbreed your animals (positive).

- You can unlock a skill perk that enables you to sometimes get seeds the forgeable plants in the work AND a perk that allows you to sometimes get seeds from wandering your crops and I love this a lot.

- I never mentioned how gorgeous the art style is. The pixel art and colors are so beautiful. One of my favorite things about it is the way they utilize black only for outlines. My other favorite thing is that the colors of the overworld change through the day. Early mornings feel so peaceful.

- Stores are open all the time. You can buy stuff all the time from any register available to you. Amazing.

- You can jump in the water and swim and dive in certain spots.

I have been deeply obsessed with Fields of Mistria since it launched and I just entered my Second Year on my farm, so I decided to compile a list of some things that I like about this game a lot so far.

You can jump. Over fences. There aren't gates (yet?), but you can jump and this isn't a thing you can do in any farming game. There's even a jump attack that you can unlock. It rocks.

Townsfolk will tell you what they like and what other townsfolk like. They may even give you the recipe for their favorite thing.

You can never plant a seed in the wrong season on accident. And if you plant a seed in the wrong place, you can dig it up before you water it to put it where you meant to have it.

You can make all your tools FOR FREE if you have the materials and doing that has the chance to give them power ups (once you've unlocked that skill)

NOT ONLY TOOLS BUT ARMOR ALSO. AND ARMOR DOESN'T TAKE UP INVENTORY SPACE IF YOU'RE WEARING IT.

You can decorate on half-squares. Get into it.

The relationships you make with townsfolk and the heart scenes that you have might just change things about the town itself. Highlighting Ryis for this one specifically.

The whole premise of the game is assisting a town after a disaster and providing disaster relief while also growing affection for each of the characters and the town as a whole. You do big projects to help the town and the town improves and provides you, the player, with more resources and activities to do.

The mines have different biomes and enemies and resources and COSMETICS that you can collect. There's really no shortage of things to collect here.

All the furniture sets play together in a really nice way where you are able to mix and match the looks you like. They're definite sets of furniture and some of them even have their own unique storage chests.

There's so much deep lore that I'm so excited about. It almost feels like by doing what there is of Early Access, I am now waiting for the next chapter to drop so I can learn more about this world and characters.

Inventory stacks limit at 999?! For everything?? I’ve never had a stack that big! (edited)

Characters outfits change every season.

You can always tell where villagers are on the map

Since Mistria is MAGICAL you can also grow crops in the winter.

That dragon is going to be romanceable. If the rumors are true, we may even have TWO romanceable dragons.

All the characters are interesting on their own and have relationships with each other beyond you. They are always having different conversations and talking about different stuff that they do and that other characters do and that YOU DO. I love them all. No flops.

I'm really hoping for more depth in the passage of time as the game develops. I would love to see either 1) a reason for time to be at a standstill in Mistria so it makes sense that the child characters are not aging as you spend multiple years in town or 2) time to actually progress and for characters to get older, especially as marriage and children come into the picture. I know this is a stretch and not everyone wants something like that... but I really liked it in A Wonderful Life as a concept and I think it would be neat here.

[drafthearse]

Polished sections of internal molds (or more precisely: pseudomorphs) of agate of gastropods from the sedimentary interbeds of the Deccan Trap volcanics, Late Cretaceous, India.

[zhabazap]

Some cool geology. This is not a mouse. This is a mineral in the shape that used to be a mouse.

A pseudomorph is when a mineral takes a shape that isn't typical for it, like in fossils. The museum doesn't exactly know where this mouse comes from, but it's probably from a copper mine.

[ghminerals]

Quartz, iridescent rainbow pyrite, calcite pseudomorph after fluorite, Nikolaerskiy mine, Dalnegorsk, Russia 2.75 inch. See video here

https://etsy.me/45AQr0E