Quartz for Utter Dummies

Dig that out with a hand shovel, Becky!

Perhaps because several of our staffers are “earthy” people, we seem to find quite a few shoddy freelance articles that are supposed to transfer knowledge about rocks and minerals. Given that quartz is probably closer to ubiquitous than any other rock-forming mineral, we’d like to think that whoever posted about it would get some of it right. We were wrong, though: take a look at the mess Rebecca Miller made out of “How to Find Quartz Stones” for Ourpastimes.com.

Our staff geologist wants us to make it quite clear up front that there isn’t really such a thing as a “quartz stone,” since quartz is a mineral. Sadly, Miller (a “life enrichment specialist”) didn’t point this out – but perhaps that’s because she was too busy misinforming people about quartz. Take, for instance, this…

“Quartz is located on the earth’s crust and forms in cracks of sandstone, granite and other types of rock.”

Ummm, yeah… “on” the crust… Becky had some other doofus things to say, such as when she told her readers that to find quartz, they’d have to

“Use the locality map at Mindat.org to find the closest or best area for you to go begin your quest (see References; scroll down to the bottom of the page where it says Localities for Quartz). Click on the area in which you are interested; this will lead you to a list of mines or known deposits.”

We checked out the Mindat page and noticed something Miller seemed to have missed: the locations map bears the notation, “Showing 214 significant localities out of 77,238 recorded on mindat.org.” Yup, Rebecca, unless you’re in Hawaii or Iceland right now, it’s a pretty safe bet that there’s quartz within a couple of feet of you. Idiot.

Becky also says that to find quartz, you need to,

“Look for mines or fields that are tilled just for the purpose of rock hunting and allow you to search for quartz stones for a fee,”

...apparently a reference to so-called Herkimer diamonds, which are actually quartz crystals. If you’re not at a commercial site, she says,

“Sometimes the presence of orangish or reddish soil is an indicator that quartz may be in the area….”

…a comment that, to be honest, made absolutely no sense to our geologist. Is she thinking of gossan? Of grus? Does she think lateritic soils are indicators of high quartz content? Inquiring minds want to know…

Miller also suggests that to hunt for quartz you need a “rock rack,” whatever that is, and thinks you can manage to perform hard-rock mining with a “hand shovel.” Yeah, Becky, right… did it ever occur to you while making up this crap that you would someday be awarded the Dumbass of the Day for this?

copyright © 2018-2022 scmrak

SI - MINERALS