Smoky quartz
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Smoky quartz is a brownish grey, translucent variety of quartz that ranges in clarity from almost complete transparency to an almost-opaque brownish-gray or black crystals.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The color of smoky quartz is produced when natural radiation, emitted from the surrounding rock, activates color centers around aluminum impurities within the crystalline quartz. <ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
VarietiesEdit
Morion is a very dark brown to black opaque variety. Morion is the German, Danish, Spanish and Polish synonym for smoky quartz.<ref>http://www.mindat.org/min-6270.html Morion on Mindat</ref> The name is from a misreading of mormorion in Pliny the Elder.<ref>New Oxford American Dictionary (2nd ed., 2005), p. 1102.</ref>
Cairngorm is a variety of smoky quartz found in the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> It usually has a smoky yellow-brown colour, though some specimens are greyish-brown. It is used in Scottish jewellery and as a decoration on kilt pins and the handles of {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (anglicised: sgian-dubhs or skean dhu).<ref>Template:Cite EB1911</ref> The largest known cairngorm crystal is a Template:Convert specimen kept at Braemar Castle.Template:Citation needed
UsesEdit
Smoky quartz is common and was not historically important, but in recent times it has become a popular gemstone, especially for jewelry.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Sunglasses, in the form of flat panes of smoky quartz, were used in China in the 12th century.<ref>Joseph Needham, Science & Civilisation in China (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1962), volume IV, part 1, page 121. Needham states that dark glasses were worn by Chinese judges to hide their facial expressions during court proceedings.</ref>
See alsoEdit
ReferencesEdit
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- Holden, Edward (1925). "The Cause of Color in Smoky Quartz and Amethyst" in American Mineralogist, vol. 9, pp. 203–252