#fossicked — Public Fediverse posts

Squarish, tabular #Cerussite scattered across an orange matrix, surrounded by exposed #Galena with typical right angled breakage planes.

#Fossicked from #MineWaste at Wheal Clinton, Flushing, #Cornwall. Found below the high tide level, beneath the main shaft of an old lead/silver mine (now in a rich person's enormous garden overlooking the sea).

Some of the galena is tarnished blue indicating it has a high silver content (~3% according to historical records).

#OrganisedAtoms

Daphnite, a type of Chamosite - #Fossicked from #MineWaste at Carharrack Mine, #Cornwall

First thing I've found that seems to be quite rare... Hexagonal stacks of deep green crystals, protected by a thick layer of fine clay, ultrasonically scrubbed clean.

I like noticing how as people get experience in any scientific field unintuitively they become more uncertain. Confusion on mindat.org as to whether this is arsenopyrite or pyrite. I was ~confident it was tetrahedrite, I'm pretty terrible at this still. I can't stop photographing these crazy shapes though.

As yet unidentified crystals #Fossicked from #MineWaste at Carharrack Mine, Gwennap #Cornwall. The gold is a coating of chalcopyrite that easily flakes off if you prod at it with a pin.

It's blue and green season at #OrganisedAtoms microscopic mining corp.

Crysocolla and malachite samples #Fossicked from #MineWaste at Wheal Unity and Penstruthal Mine, #Cornwall

One of my fave recent finds: goethite which has grown to replace pyrite, so has inherited the cubic form and surface striations of a different mineral (this is called pseudomorphism). You can also see smaller acicular (thin & stick-like) goethite growing out from the surface, which is it's more normal form.

#Fossicked from #MineWaste at Wheal Unity, St Day, #Cornwall This was in a really heavy rock, mostly goethite, copper secondary minerals and possibly some native copper, from the tailings surrounding the remaining capped shaft on the site.

Shiny, iridescent and striated #Chalcopyrite crystal cluster found deep inside a large mass of quartz, #Fossicked from #MineWaste at Wheal Clifford, Gwennap, #Cornwall

Listening to electrons spilling through semiconducting junctions in this galena #Fossicked from #MineWaste at Wheal Lovelace, #Cornwall.

The crystal is being used by one oscillator to modulate the frequency of another. With this simple setup you can experience the highly complex interactions between electrons and crystals grown hundreds of millions of years ago.

Part of Organised Atoms, a project funded by Flamm Cornwall and being run with Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change

We like to think this type of clean geometric minimalism is 'modern', but humans will have been influenced by these shapes since before we were human.

Cubes of #Galena #Fossicked from #MineWaste at East Wheal Maid. I found an approx 5cm thick section of druzy quartz vein, with lots of mineralisation present, which you can see here - plenty of #Chalcopyrite and #Sphalerate as well.

mindat.org Specimen ID: U6N-FKU
Field of View: 15 mm

#Schorl (a kind of #Tourmaline) embedded in a nice piece of elvan - the #Cornish name for a particular type of hard granite with these large isolated tourmaline crystals.

#Fossicked from #MineWaste at the top of the large tailings dam at the eastern end of the Wheal Maid valley. This was constructed from waste rock excavated from Mount Wellington, a mine a few miles away during the late 70s. This specimen is more likely to originate there than any of the many older mines nearby.

mindat.org Specimen ID: 08U-EGH
Field of View: 20 mm
Largest Crystal Size: 7 mm

One transistor radio, now with pyrite detector diode (#Fossicked from #MineWaste at Unity Wood mine, #Cornwall). The pyrite seems to work just as well as the standard germanium one, it doesn't take long to find a working junction on the crystal surface. #OrganisedAtoms

New microscope! To celebrate, another shot of that fractured cassiterite revealing it's three 'cleavage planes' as a result of its atomic lattice pattern. Field of view ~5mm (#fossicked from #minewaste at Nangiles mine, #Cornwall)