Jewelry

[banned again]

@alice87 What you've mentioned about zircon is due to radioactive decay, where the uranium and thorium in the crystalline structure breaks it down and yields an amorphous stone called metamict zircon (like an opal, no crystalline structure).

[SilleeMee]

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@banned again wrote:

@alice87 What you've mentioned about zircon is due to radioactive decay, where the uranium and thorium in the crystalline structure breaks it down and yields an amorphous stone called metamict zircon (like an opal, no crystalline structure).

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Zircon is so interesting to me. It's amazing that it never actually breaks down and geologically it keeps forming rings of layered zircon material which gets added to the crystal during a magma forming event...geochronology is the technical word for that. The rings can be dated in a similar way as a tree is dated according to its rings. There's a name for the geologic rings of zircon but I can't remember what it is.

[gertrudecloset]

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@banned again wrote:

@alice87 What you've mentioned about zircon is due to radioactive decay, where the uranium and thorium in the crystalline structure breaks it down and yields an amorphous stone called metamict zircon (like an opal, no crystalline structure).

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@SilleeMee , you go girl!  I think the simple principles applies to all gemstones: Cut, Color, Clarity.  Color, color, color is what is most important about natural gemstones.  This is also true of gemstones that have been treated or flux filled waxed filled and so on.

It is quite possible that a lackadaisical zircon without scintillation and brillance could be from the lack of a skilled lapidary to cut and facet the stones in a diamond-like fashion or that the rough is just not that great or that treatment was properly done on a stone.  There are lot of reasons why one stone has more beautiful presence than the other!