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Arkansas Rockhound News “Earth laughs in flowers.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Arkansas Rockhound News
Official Newsletter of the Central Arkansas Gem, Mineral and Geology Society (CAGMAGS)
June / July 2014
Upcoming Club Events July 22
Next club meeting Terry Library 6:30 p.m.
Program: New Dinosaur Tracks in Southern Arkansas Doug Hansen, AGS
Beautiful Blue! Check out Stephanie’s story on this interesting rock from Texas!
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Nearby mineral shows August 23-24 Ozark Earth Science Gem,
Mineral & Fossil Club Annual Show Van Matre Senior Center 1101 Spring St. (Cooper Park) Mountain Home, AR
Sat. 10am-6pm Sun 10am-4pm
Admission $1 (870) 424-0956 (870) 481-5697
Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts-Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders-held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft.
Said Lovell, “The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you real-ize just what you have back there on Earth.”
Earthrise
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President’s Message
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The June program was interesting. I now know how to grow my own peridot gems. I only need a lab at UALR and a lot of help. The Tulsa show on July 11,12 and 13 was both the Rocky Mt Federa-tion and the American Federation show for this year.
Can you guess this month’s Mystery Gem?
Hint #1 – It took only a mere 20 months to cut this beauty! Hint #2 – Could it be yours for only $83,187,382…$1 over its last sale price? Hint #3 – Is it a “dream”?… is it a “star”?…
Answer on page 6
Mike Austen, CAGMAGS President
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This was a show you wanted to see.
There were a lot of great speakers too, in-cluding Steve Arnold the Meteorite Man, Mike Everhart the author of Oceans Of Kansas and, Bob Jones Chief Editor for Rock and Gem. There were a lot of great dealers, events for kids, fieldtrips, demonstrations, silent auctions, exhib-its and lots more. - Mike
Pearls and Rubies
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Call it a Beautiful Blue!
Llanite is a hypabyssal rhyolite containing phenocrysts of reddish microcline feldspar and blue quartz. The blue quartz phenocrysts are usually euhedral with color zoning from light blue cores to dark blue edges. Quartz pheno-crysts retain beta quartz dipyramidal shapes and are up to 5 mm in diameter. The quartz and microcline phenocrysts are enclosed in a microcrystalline matrix of quartz – 34.6% microcline – 27.8% plagioclase – 27.9% biotite – 8.6%, minor fluorite – 1.0%, magnetite – trace, apatite – 0.13%, zircon and ilmenite – trace. To put it more plainly: this igneous rock is a fine-grained granitic rock with phe-nocrysts of blue quartz and pink-reddish feldspar scattered in a dark brown background. It is sometimes called Llanoite or Llanolite. It is named after Llano County, Texas where, ac-cording to locals, it is the only location where it is found. However, geologists have identified oth-er locations where this rock may be found (according to Robert Reed). If you want to take a road trip from Llano, TX, take Hwy 16 N for about 8.6 miles and you will reach the outcropping in a road cut. GPS coordinates are 30° 44.119’ N and 098° 22.147’ W. If you pass the rest stop on the west side you have gone to far (according to the Texas Roadrunner website). They also suggest strong chisels and a sledgehammer. The rock is tough, but takes a polish well! It takes 8 hours and 17 minutes (536 miles) to get to Llano, TX from Little Rock, AR.
The cause of the blue colored quartz is somewhat of a de-bate. Iddings (1904) suggests it was due to “Reflection of blue light waves from the minute colorless prisms, whose width is a fraction of the length of the light waves.” He compares this to Rayleigh scattering in the atmosphere. Burmester and Barker (1970) found zircon in the sample. Based on that, they agreed that inclusions were the cause of the Blue color, but with disper-sion in the zircon, not Rayleigh scattering. Frazier and Globel (1982) suggest submicroscopic rutile inclusions might cause the scattering. The most recent studies (Coblieg et al., 1986; Zolen-sky et al., 1988) suggested that the blue color was caused by submicrometer –sized ilmenite inclusions.
No matter what the cause, it is a BEAUTIFUL BLUE!
Stephanie
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CAGMAGS Meeting Minutes for May 2014
The meeting was brought to order at 6:30 on May 27, 2014 by President Mike Austen.
Upcoming events:
Marion, KY June 7 & 8 Park Hill, MO June 13-15 Ft. Smith, AR June 13-15 Tulsa, OK July 11-13 (National show. Also pre-show activities. See Am. Fed. Web site) Branson, MO July 4-6 (see e-mail sent by Mike about this) Des Moines, IA Oct 18-19 Mid-west Fed. Show. Pre-show field trips on Oct 17. See MW Fed web site. And did you see Rene on TV? Old Business:
The Burns Park swap site is confirmed for April 11, 2015, but the fee can’t be paid until Jan. 2015.
New Business:
We need a sunshine committee. Barbara Champagne volunteered.
Reports: UALR – Stephanie Blandin, Bill Alcott, and Sarah Dodson are the new committee for putting specimens in the case at UALR. The first ones will be from Arkansas. Further info to follow. Sec/Treas – reports approved as published. Library – two new magazines are in, ready to check out.
Old Field trip – only 4 people made the Jones Mill trip. Calcite was found this time, in addition to the previous finds. Trips to Ron Coleman’s and Miller Mtn for quartz with other clubs had no one attending from our club.
New field trip – Pyrite creek the second weekend in June. Info to follow. The new field trip forms are now in use. Mike DeAngelis recommended a future trip to the Pfeiffer Museum at Piggott.
Next program – TBA
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Show report – Stephanie has found a food vendor to be outside at the show. We have no financial connection to this, as usual.
Show & tell – Bill Alcott brought Zebra Stone bookends he made. Very nice!
Program – Rocks and Minerals of the Magnet Cove Cretaceous Igne-ous Complex, Hot Spring County, AR. Presented by our own Mike Howard. This program tied in with our recent field trip to the Cove. There are about 100 minerals found in Magnet Cove. Mike covered a lot of material about this fascinating place. I got so interested I forgot to take notes! Another great program, thanks Mike.
Submitted by Sarah Dodson, Sec/Treas
CAGMAGS Meeting Minutes for June 2014
No meeting minutes recorded for the month of June.
Subduction at Mt. Ranier Scientist used a combination of seismic and magnetic data to create a detailed picture of the subduction zone near Mt. Ranier.
Photo: McGary et al./Nature Here’s a link to the short article: http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/07/detailed-imaging-of-mount-rainier-shows-subduction-zone-in-glorius-detail/
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BenchTips by Brad Smith
WINDING JUMP RINGS
If you need a few jump rings the same size, it’s easy to grab a round rod and wind as many as you need. But when you need a lot of them, some form of winder saves a lot of time. A variable speed screw gun makes quick work of wind-ing the coils. Screw guns are quite inexpensive at discount stores and are re-markably handy for odd jobs in the shop and around the house.
To wind a coil, just bend a right angle on the end of the wire about a half inch long and insert this into the screw gun chuck. Then wind slowly, keeping a tight coil. I like to rest the end of the mandrel on the edge of the table or bench pin. Finally, one note of caution. If you are winding and entire length of wire, be careful as you get near the end of the wire. If the end passes under your thumb, it can cause a nasty scratch or cut.
For more great BenchTips, visit the BenchTips page at:
www.facebook.com/BenchTips
Mystery Gem
The Pink Star / Steinmetz Pink / The Pink Dream
The Pink Star, formerly known as the Steinmetz Pink, is a diamond weighing 59.60 carat (11.92 g), rated in color as Fancy Vivid Pink by the Gemological Institute of America. The Pink Star was mined by De Beers in 1999 in South Africa, and weighed 132.5 carat in the rough. The Pink Star is the largest known diamond having been rated Vivid Pink. As a result of this exceptional rarity, the Steinmetz Group took a cautious 20 months to cut the Pink. It was unveiled in Monaco on 29 May 2003 in a public ceremony.
To learn more about Half Dome, visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Star_(diamond)
The Central Arkansas Gem, Mineral and Geol-ogy Society (CAGMAGS) meets on the fourth Tuesday at the Terry Library, 2015 Napa Val-ley Drive, in Little Rock at 6:30 PM. Visitors
and pebble pups are always welcome.
President Mike Austen (501) 868-4553 [email protected]
Vice-President Stephanie Blandin (501) 590-5760
Secretary/Treasurer Sarah Dodson (501) 223-8372 [email protected]
Field Trip Coordinator David Hodge (501) 837-6713
Webmaster Chris Butterworth (501) 920-9249 [email protected]
Newsletter Editor Michael DeAngelis (501) 569-3542 [email protected]
Show Chairman Tom Sharp (501) 379-8653 [email protected]
Librarian Ann Austen (501) 868-4553 [email protected]
Program Chairman David Dodson (501) 223-8372 [email protected]
Sunshine Chairman Barbara Champagne (501) 258-2576 [email protected]
C A G M A G S
Arkansas Rockhound News June / July 2014
Arkansas Rockhound News is the Official Newsletter of the
Central Arkansas Gem, Mineral and Geology Society (CAGMAGS)
The Central Arkansas Gem, Mineral and Geology Society is dedicated to promot-ing interest in mineralogy and the relat-ed sciences, interest in lapidary and the
related arts; to encourage field trips and the enjoyment of collecting and preserving minerals as they occur in nature, and the study of geological for-mations, especially those of our Natural State of Arkan-sas. We are a small group of people that enjoy getting together to share our common interests.
“Old rockhounds never die, they just slowly petrify!”
Arkansas Rockhound News Official Newsletter of the Central Arkansas Gem, Mineral, and Geology Society (CAGMAGS) P.O. Box 241188 Little Rock, AR 72223 www.centralarrockhound.org