Joyful Maiden: Beryl, Sardonyx (Onyx), Topaz, and Carbuncle

Okay, here's as far as I've written for the Gems and Minerals booklet. Footnotes look like this: [1]. Scroll down to the bottom to read them. The list I posted originally (with all those weird-sounding names) won't work for me--I can't find enough info about them. So, I decided to research some of the gems/precious stones mentioned in the Bible--it's turned out quite interesting!

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BERYL

Beryl, a mineral, comes in several colours, shapes and sizes. Its crystals range in size from small up to a couple metres long. Pure beryl has no colour, but this is very unusual, and most of the time there are impurities in it that cause the colour. Beryl varies in colour, but mostly it is red, white, blue, green, and yellow. Beryl is made of many different things, but silicate (chemical salt made of metal combined with silicon and oxygen) is one of the most prominent. Silicate is also used in many other ways. About 90% of the earth's crust is made of rocks made of silicate minerals.

Beryl is mined in quite a few places around the world, but a few of the top mining places are the US, Africa, and South America. The only place where red beryl can be found is in Utah. Golden beryls are found in Namibia, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Madagascar, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka. Pink beryl (or morganite) can be found in Brazil, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, US, Afghanistan, China, Madagascar, and Namibia. Aquamarines (bluish-green beryl) can be found in central Colorado, Wyoming, and Sri Lanka.

Beryl has a very rare element in it called “beryllium”. Only about 100 minerals have this in it. Because beryl has this in it, scientists have used it for making wire, and even used it on space shuttles. Beryl has high tensile (can be stretched a lot) strength, and are hard and light. This makes it very good for things that need light, strong material. Beryl is also used in jewellery, as it is a precious gemstone.

http://www.ehow.com/about_5045794_mineral-beryl-used.html
http://www.ehow.com/facts_5801539_beryl-ore-used-for_.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryl

SARDONYX (ONYX)

Onyxes, gems used on the high priest's breastplate in Exodus, are very beautiful jewels. They are striped jewels, their bands come in colours from white to almost any other colour (there are a few colours you can't find, such as purple or blue), but you can find most colours. Sardonyx are a reddish type of Onyx.

Sardonyx are found in many different places around the world, including Uruguay, India, Brazil, Madagascar, China, Czech Republic, Portugal, and USA. Most sardonyx are found in India. Since sardonyx are found around the world, their price isn't in the “too high” level. Many people can afford to buy these beautiful stones.

Sardonyx have very unique bands. Sometimes, the bands resemble a tree's rings. Other times, they remind you of the waves on the ocean. No two stones have been found to be exactly the same. The lines are irregular, and meander all over the place – much like the layers of the earth. The stones are quite fun to compare.

Sardonyx (and Onyx) was often used in Ancient Egyptian times for every-day household use. It was carved to be used as bowls and other pottery things. The Cretians (who lived on the island of Crete) used it in their carvings. Onyx was also known to the Romans and Greeks. The ancient writer Pliny mentioned onyx in his writings, and described different artificial techniques in his book, the Naturalis Historia. Many times (then and now), the Onyx and Sardonyx were used to make beads and other jewellery.

http://www.gemselect.com/other-info/sardonyx-gems.php
http://www.mindat.org/min-7604.html
http://www.jewelinfo4u.com/Sardonyx_Facts_and_Buying_Guide.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onyx

TOPAZ

Topaz, a beautiful clear gem, is the second stone on the high priest's breastplate. Topaz comes in many, many colours. You can find it red, yellow, light grey, blue-brown, or reddish-orange naturally. They can also be turned white, pale green, blue, gold, pink, reddish-yellow, or transparent. When you look at topaz, you can “see” right through it. Topaz is also quite hard. If you rubbed a chunk against glass, you would scratch the glass.

Topaz are found all around the world. To name a few, you can find it in the US, Russia, Pakistan, Australia, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka. The blue topaz (a very rare type of natural topaz) is Texas' gemstone. Often, topaz is found around lava flows. Brazilian topaz (which is generally clear in colour) can be found up to the size of boulders, often weighing up to several hundred pounds.

Topaz are generally used as gemstones. Often people use it for jewellery, and while it is not such a common gemstone, it is still available. The most valuable topaz is a orange-yellow colour.

Topaz are mined above and below ground. Most of the time, it is mined using surface mining, or open pit mining. There are some cases where there is underground mining, though. Many times, the companies decide whether to do open pit mining or underground mining depending on how deep it is underground.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz
http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00461/topaz.htm

CARBUNCLE

Introduction: The name “carbuncle” is given to any red cut gemstone. According to Wikipedia.org, what the Bible was meaning when it listed the “carbuncle” as on Aaron, the High Priest's breastplate, was a dark red garnet. I will use this assumption, and tell you a little about the garnet today.

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Garnets can be many different colours. Virtually all the colours found in the rainbow can be found (in one form or another) in a garnet. A few of the colours they can show are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black, pink and colourless. The rarest colour is blue, and was first found in the 1800's in Madagascar. Other places where they can be found include the USA, Turkey, and Russia.

There are different types of garnets, all divided into groups by their chemical make-up. The six most common kinds are pyrope, almandine, spessartine, grossular, uvarovite and andradite. Here are what each mean:

Pyrope. Pyropes are the only member of the garnet family to always have red in them. Their name comes from the Roman words meaning “fire” and “eye”. They are made up of chemical elements calcium (Ca.), chromium (Cr., “a blue-white metallic element found in nature only in combination and used especially in alloys and in chrome plating[1]”), iron (Fe.), and manganese (Mn. “a grayish-white usually hard and brittle metallic element that resembles iron but is not magnetic[2]”).
Almandine. Almandines are a red inclining to purple garnets. They are often cut with a convex (or rounded like the outside of a ball) face, or “en cabochon”. When cut “en cabochon”, they are called “carbuncles”. Almadine garnets are often found in gem-gravels of Sri Lanka.
Spessartine. Spessartine is made up of silicate (chemical salt made of metal combined with silicon and oxygen), manganese, and aluminium. This red or orange garnet is found in Australia, Myanmar, India, Afghanistan, Israel, Madagascar, Tanzania and the United States.
Grossular. Grossular garnets are made up of a calcium-aluminium mineral compound. They can very in colour from green to cinnamon to red and yellow. They can be found in Siberia, Kenya, and Tanzania.
Uvarovite. Uvarovite garnets are made up of chromium, with a formula: Ca3Cr2(SiO4)3. I'm not even going to try to explain the last bit, but the first two things are calcium and chromium. The last bit is silicon tetraoxide, whatever that is! Uvarovite is the rarest in comparison to the other kinds of garnet in the group, and is only green in colour. They are found with chromium ore in Spain, Russia, Canada, Finland, Norway, and South Africa.
Andradite. Andradite comes in three main different colours – black, vivid green, and yellow green. The vivid green garnet in this group is one of the rarest and most valuable gems in the world. They are found in Italy, the Ural Mountains of Russia, Arizona and California and in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in Ukraine.