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Black Country Bricks
Black Country geology is often celebrated for those three things that were so crucial to the industrial revolution: Coal, limestone and iron ore, but there is another rock which is often forgotten: Clay. There were many different variations of clays, and each could be used to produce characteristic products. There is no ambiguity about the [...]
Posted in General, Local Geology, Minerals
Tagged clay, fireclay, refractory, stourbridge
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Libyan Desert Silica Glass
This mysterious material was ‘rediscovered’ in December 1932 by Patrick Clayton whilst leading an expedition for the Egyptian ‘Desert Surveys Department’ across the Great Sand Sea of the western desert, near the Libyan border. It was found lying around in some quantity in the open ‘streets’ between ranks of high longitudinal dunes and has since [...]
Posted in General, Guest Blogs, Minerals
Tagged BCGS, Desert, Earth history, Geology, Glass, Lybia, Minerals, Silica
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Rock with laughter
This short but amusing extract entitled ‘Geobabble’ was taken from the newsletter of the Black Country Geological Society number 187, December 2007. It reveals that even minerals can have a sense of humour at this festive time of year. Petrology deals with the origin, composition, structure, and alteration of rocks. To do this geologists slice up perfectly good [...]
Posted in General, Guest Blogs, Minerals, Rocks, Rocks and Minerals
Tagged BCGS, Geology, Igneous rocks, Microscopes, Minerals, Petrology, Rocks, Thin Sections, volcano, volcanoes
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Ore inspiring
This is an extract from ‘The Dudley Bug’ section in the Black Country Geological Society newsletter 209: October 2011. Today we use metal for practically everything, over the last 50 years uses and demand for metals has increased due to their properties. The most common metals we use in today’s modern society include copper, aluminium, [...]
Posted in General, Minerals, Rocks, Rocks and Minerals
Tagged BCGS, deposits, Geology, Igneous rocks, metals, Minerals, ores
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Protecting your pyrite collection
Graham Worton the current curator and Keeper of Geology at Dudley Museum & Art Gallery tells us about how ‘pyrite cancer’ can destroy the pyrite specimens within collections unless the correct methods are used to preserve them.
Posted in Collecting, Minerals
Tagged Collecting, Collections care, Fossils, Minerals, Pyrites, Video
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What are the differences between rocks and minerals?
The differences between rocks and minerals are that a mineral is a single constituent with a particular colour, atomic and crystalline structure. A rock however is an aggregate of different minerals which does not have a set composition or structure. So without minerals you wouldn’t get rocks. Minerals are often single crystals with a particular [...]
Minerals
A mineral is a solid naturally occurring substance with a crystalline structure and a composition specific to that mineral. It has an atomic arrangement specific to its mineral variety. On a whole, they are inorganic elements or compounds which form through a process known as crystallisation. An example of minerals crystallising are those within a [...]
