FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Ken]

I've been told that this is for sure some sort of mineral but no one can say for sure what mineral it is. I showed this to several people and like me most were clueless, I came across a geochemist at a mineral show who looked at this and noticed something that no one had before, glass bubbles. The geochemist tried to explain to me how something like this might have happened but my brain simply could not wrap itself around what I was being told. Based on this composition, does anyone know what type of mineral this pink/purple material is??? Is that amount of oxygen normal for a mineral??

[Matt_Zukowski]

Ken:

This is another example of what most of us would call a "random rock" with you also furnishing a chemical analysis. It is difficult to say what the purple is - it could be a volcanic extrusive rock or it could be a mineral or group or minerals or whatever. We are just not going to be very helpful to you if you keep posing such questions to us.

As far as oxygen in a rock - oxygen is the most common element in the earth's crust. The most common minerals are silicates (composed in part of Si04 groups).

I don't believe that the way you are approaching this is the best way for you to proceed. You need context to interpret a chemical analysis - in fact, you should have context before you even conduct the analysis, otherwise your analyses won't be very useful, as I am afraid has been the case here.

You really need to go to a local rock club/mineral show/rockshop/geology department/state geologic survey and bend their ear. Or just read an introductory text on geology if you are so inclined.

Sorry and good luck.

[alfredo]

Looks like the color of fire retardants sprayed on forest fires from planes, so then the colored side was up and the other side down. Did it come from somewhere like California subject to forest fires?

Or it could be paint, which would explain the titanium content in the analysis. The other elements listed, like Si, Al, O, etc, are from the ordinary rock-forming minerals like feldspar and mica which constitute the bulk of the rock.

Don't feel bad about confusing this crust for a mineral. I've done that too, mistaking some pinkish violet patch on a rock for a mineral, and later with more detailed study finding out it was bird poop, probably a bird that had eaten blackberries ;((

[Pete Modreski]

Alfredo's fire retardant suggestion like it may be "right on", a very good thought. I would never have thought of this! (I've probably never seen fire retardant that was actually sprayed on a rock, either.)

In the first two photos, the underlying part of the rock looked greenish, which made me think it might be olivine (peridotite). But in the other photos, it just looks grayish, so I think, just a quartz-bearing rock, such as granite.

[SteveB]

#1 For Sure, it's not a mineral. It's a rock. Rocks are composed of minerals. Crystals are the purest form of a mineral. This reminds me of randoms forms workers would chuck in the kiln at my grandfathers brickworks. Workers would decorate their gardens with blobby bricks made from dregs of the mix. Where was this found?

[Pete Richards]

The last highly magnified photo appears to show some shiny spherical objects in the pockets in the rock; they appear to be colorless. If they are as they appear, they probably are beads of glass. It's a stretch, but are these all essentially the same size? Does not matter too much, except trying to figure out what their source might be if they are indeed glass.

In any case, I cannot imagine any way this could be a natural rock containing such spheres. It is almost certainly man-made, though whether intentionally or accidentally is unclear.

Light elements like oxygen produce notoriously unreliable peaks, in the sense that you can't reliably judge concentration from peak height. This spectrum also shows a large carbon peak. Carbon is often not even detected by EDS. If the carbon peak really does indicate carbon, there might be quite a lot of it to produce such a peak. Perhaps there's quite a bit of organic matter in this pink region, which would be further evidence against it being a natural object.

You might try a paint solvent such as a paint stripper or GooGone on this stuff. They won't touch common minerals, but will dissolve paint and other similar organic materials.

I think you said you got some hardness points. How hard is this stuff?

[Rugie]

As for a red fire fighting (retardant) coating, I see no Phosphorus or Boron in the elemental analysis, so that is unlikely. Is the red coating removable with water? That test would be instructive also.

[alfredo]

There are tiny phosphorus peaks on the analysis, and boron is too light of an element to show up at all even if present in large amounts.

[Riccardo Modanesi]

Hi to everybody!
You may say it's a dinosaur egg!!! Hahahahaha!!!!
Greetings from Italy (just to smile a little bit!) by Riccardo.

[Ken]

I thought for sure this was some sort of paint, but you can't scrape it off, can't burn it off, and it has no reaction to acid. You have to pry it or chisel it off and when you do, some of the quartz comes off with it. I'm told that whatever it is, it appears to have been boiling hot when it splattered onto this quartz. The thickness is about 1-3 mm and has a hardness of about 5.5-6.0. This stone was washed out of a slot in a mountain side out in the middle of the desert.
Thanks for the replies and all the good info.