Pure quartz, or “rock crystal” from Brazil. Source: Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0 Pick up a rock almost anywhere on Earth and chances are pretty good that there’s at least some quartz in it.

Here’s how it works. Hundreds of fragments of a rare transparent type of quartz called "rock crystal" suggest Neolithic people used the mineral to decorate graves and other structures at a ...

Geodes, for instance, are created when mineral-rich water seeps into hollow spaces within rock formations and slowly evaporates, leaving behind dazzling crystals like quartz and amethyst.

In nature, it rarely occurs in its pure form, but as silicon dioxide in crystals such as quartz, agate, amethyst and rock crystal. Could these rocks in their raw form be used to make a computer?

ROCK crystal, quartz, the common crystallised form of dioxide of silicon SiO2, is, from many points of view, the most interesting of all minerals and the most instructive example of crystalline st ...

The secret is in the structure of the quartz, Voisey explains. Quartz is the only abundant mineral whose crystals lack a centre of symmetry. This means that when these crystals are distorted or ...

It’s a nifty trick of geology that’s captured three phases of matter, with a solid exterior, liquid middle, and even a gas bubble to boot, all contained within rock crystal quartz. Liquid ...