Crystals

Crystals

It is a remarkable fact that no definition of life has yet been advanced which will not apply to a crystal with as much veracity as to those obviously animate objects of the animal and vegetable world which we are accustomed to regard in the ordinary sense as living. A crystal grows when surrounded by a suitable environment, capable of supporting it with its natural food, namely, its own chemical substance in the liquid or vaporous state or dissolved in a solvent. Moreover, when a crystal is broken, and then surrounded with this proper environment, it grows much more rapidly at the broken part than elsewhere, repairing the damage done in a very short space of time and soon presenting the appearance of a perfect crystal once more. In this respect it is quite comparable with animal tissue, the wonderful recuperative power of which after injury, exhibited by special growth at the injured spot, is often a source of such marvel to us. Indeed, a crystal may be broken in half, and yet each half in a relatively very brief interval 2will grow into a crystal as large as the original one again. The longevity and virility of the spores and seeds of the vegetable kingdom have been the themes of frequent amazement, although many of the stories told of them have been unable to stand the test of strict investigation. The virility of a crystal, however, is unchanged and permanent. A crystal of quartz, rock-crystal, for instancedetached, during the course of the disintegration of the granitic rock of which it had originally formed an individual crystal, by the denuding influences at work in nature thousands of years ago, subsequently knocked about the world as a rounded sand grain, blown over deserts by the wind, its corners rounded off by rude contact with its fellows, and subjected to every variety of rough treatmentmay eventually in our own day find itself in water containing in solution a small amount of the material of which quartz is composed, silicon dioxide SiO2. No sooner is this favourable environment for continuing its crystallisation presented to it, than, however old it may be, it begins to sprout and grow again. It becomes surrounded in all probability by a beautiful coating of transparent quartz, with exterior faces inclined at the exact angles of quartz, although no sign of exterior faces had hitherto persisted through all the stages of its varied adventures. Or it may grow chiefly at two or three especially favourable places, and in the course of a few weeks, under suitable conditions, at each place a perfect little quartz crystal will radiate out from the sand grain, composed of a miniature hexagonal prism terminated by the well-known pyramid, really consisting of a pair of 3trigonal (rhombohedral) pyramids more or less equally developed, and together producing an apparently hexagonal one. Four such grains of sand, from which quartz crystals are growing, are shown in Fig. 1, as they appear under a microscope magnifying about fifty diameters. One of them shows a perfectly developed doubly terminated crystal of quartz growing from the tip of a singly terminated one, attached to and growing directly out of the grain. Fig. 1.Sand Grains with Quartz Crystals growing from them. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 68530
Author: Tutton, A. E. H. (Alfred Edwin Howard)
Release Date: Jul 15, 2022
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publisher: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner
Publication Date: 1911
Publisher Country: United Kingdom