Science can do a lot. Scientists respond to a seemingly ridiculous questions. Can the quartz stones change color? Can. It is known that many stones "burn out" under the influence of sun rays. Loses its paint purple amethyst, smoky quartz, yellow as a lemon, citrine, wine-yellow, pink and sky blue topaz, precious, rare color of tea roses, phenacite stone, gold zircon - hyacinth. Ural stone-cutters produced, smoky quartz, baked it into bread or clay caravan uniformly heated in the oven and made into citrine. But accurate information about how to change the color of the stone has been preserved: they are lost in centuries.
Scientists of the Institute of Crystallography, Professor Lemmlein and Vedeneyeva set out to find out why stones become discolored.
Scientists managed to restore the color of some minerals, directing beam of radium rays on them. Some stones have stained stronger, some - weaker than the other, and some did not respond at all, depending on the color - to therein contained impurities, mainly iron. These impurities have been absorbed by the crystals during their formation at high temperatures reached in the depths of the earth 400-500 degrees or more.
Now it was to solve the problem; how does nature minerals were subjected to irradiation of radioactive elements - radium, thorium, and other?
They were found stones, the color of which is located halos, spots. Studies under microscope showed that each spot in the center is a radioactive mineral grain.
Running from it light colors the stone. This study has suggested George Glebovich Lemmlein suggests that in cases where it is not visible under a microscope grains and stone painting exist radioactive sources "solution" to the atoms throughout the crystal. How many in the crystal radioactive substances could not be determined analytically. But when they found samples with spots and found the intensity of the radiation source, authorizing the departure of 1-2 beta particles per minute, it calculated that in order to create a source of colored spot in the stone, it took several hundred million years.
As a result, it was found that the stone changes color under the influence of radiation from radioactive elements particle absorbed during crystal growth.
In nature, this process requires hundreds of millions of years. In the laboratory, the scientists used radioactive sources in the hundreds of millions of times greater than in nature. Stones could artificially colored in a few hours or days. Also radiation can be used X-rays and neutron rays tray.
Pure quartz stones crystals are widely applied in electronics. The colorless, free of impurities from the crystals of rock crystal are used for the manufacture of important components of optical devices. Natural colored varieties of quartz, amethyst, citrine - along with other colored minerals are used in the jewelry industry.
So, we can artificially change the color of the stone. By heating it we can discolor and byradiation - to paint.
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