Lab 4: Pick and Analyze a Mineral!

For this week's assignment, we have been asked to pick and analyze a mineral of some kind. It could be anything we wanted, just had to show that we actually did some real work in finding something, preferably not just one we keep talking about in class, I imagine. Well, call me crazy, but I wanted to do more research into sunstones! I always knew they existed, even if they rose to popularity among my age because of their inclusion in a popular video game series.

Sunstone, also known as red labradorite, is a radiant crystal. It falls under the plagioclase feldspar group, but the brilliant appearance has led to sunstone gemstones being used as jewelry. This oligoclase is in two major forms as jewelry and just as a stone.

This first kind is much more opaque and more like natural feldspar. As you can see, these are tumbled, but the "sunspot" characteristics made ancients believe that they were imbued with the essence of the sun itself. Power and wealth came to those who could "control" the sun, so sunstones rose into prominence. Some claim that this looks like an orange opal, and the color is often associated with hematite that found its way into the stone.

This second kind of sunstone is much more well known to Americans, for this is Oregon sunstone. This variant is a gemstone quality simply due to the way it forms. There are significant deposits of copper in this mineral, causing the change of color to look like a sunburst. Oregonencyclopedia.org - "Some Oregon sunstones exhibit a glow from within due to millions of microscopic copper platelets, known as schiller. Colors of the stone vary from clear, champagne, yellow, light pink, salmon, orange, and red to blue-green. Intense red and blue-green are the colors that are most rare. Sometimes, when viewed from different angles, as many as three colors will show within one stone."

Yeah, that's what you think it is. Beautiful specimen. As for mineral qualities, sunstone is known for a hardness from 6-7.2 on the hardness scale. This means that it is of sufficient quality for gemstones. It officially has a triclinic crystalline structure. It is double refractive, and it has a white streak. Also, sunstone has a conchoidal fracture. All of this leads to completely natural gemstones that are not altered when put into a piece of jewelry like others that may be heated or modified. The chemical formula is (CaNa)((AISi)₂Si₂O₈).

Sunstone is just awesome. Enough said.