Monday, May 28, 2018

Gold's Distant Cousin - Pyrite

On a recent trip to the desert prospecting, I stumbled upon a glint in the sand. I was heading to an area when I caught a sharp flash in my left eye. Bending over for inspection, I found a small quartz pebble with what I first thought was gold.
As you have probably done in the past after the initial excitement, I discovered it only to be pyrite. I still think it is a pretty material, so I usually save it all anyway. Iron sulfide has made many a man a fool! There is a tiny vein of it diagonally and three distinct spots. Anyway, from Wikipedia -
Pyrite's metallic luster and pale brass-yellow hue give it a superficial resemblance to gold, hence the well-known nickname of fool's gold. The color has also led to the nicknames brassbrazzle, and Brazil, primarily used to refer to pyrite found in coal.The mineral pyrite, or iron pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is an iron sulfide with the chemical formula FeS2 (iron(II) disulfide). Pyrite is considered the most common of the sulfide materials.
The name pyrite is derived from the Greek πυρίτης (pyritēs), "of fire" or "in fire",in turn from πύρ (pyr), "fire". In ancient Roman times, this name was applied to several types of stone that would create sparks when struck against steel; Pliny the Elder described one of them as being brassy, almost certainly a reference to what we now call pyrite.
By Georgious Agricola's time, c. 1550, the term had become a generic term for all of the sulfide minerals
Pyrite is usually found associated with other sulfides or oxides in quartz veins, sedimentary rock, and metamorphic, as well as in coal beds and as a replacement mineral in fossils, but has also been identified in the sclerites of scaly-foot gastropods. Despite being nicknamed fool's gold, pyrite is sometimes found in association with small quantities of gold. Gold and arsenic occur as a coupled substitution in the pyrite structure. In the Carlin-type gold deposits, arsenian pyrite contains up to 0.37% gold by weight.

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