Turquoise with pyriteOnly a handful of minerals have given their name to a commonly used color. This

Turquoise with pyriteOnly a handful of minerals have given their name to a commonly used color. This is one of them.This piece of turquoise comes from Arizona. Turquoise commonly forms around larger copper deposits, where the copper is picked up by groundwater percolating through the copper and eventually deposited elsewhere in the sediment. Its main use is as gems/jewelry, so there are a variety of types and textures available from around the world.This turquoise from Arizona grew with a matrix of pyrite, an iron-sulfur mineral. Iron can fit into the same mineral structure as the copper in turquoise and when present gives the mineral a greenish color (you can see a few faint hints of that here). In this case, the iron picked up by the fluid bonded with sulfur and the copper bonded with phosphorus to make turquoise – there was enough sulfur that the iron went into a different mineral, preserving the blue color of the gem.-JBBImage credit: Macroscopic Solutionshttps://flic.kr/p/nquswQReferences:http://geology.com/minerals/turquoise.shtml http://tucsonturquoise.com/?page_id=28http://waddelltradingco.com/turquoise-corner/ -- source link

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