Hobbies-Craft
Rock&Gem Magazine
Volcanoes Continue to Capture Headlines
EARTH SCIENCE IN THE NEWS
4 min |
September 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
SMITHSON, SMITHSONITE, AND THE SMITHSONIAN
ROCK SCIENCE
3 min |
September 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
“PETOSKEY STONE” Michigan's State Stone
FOSSIL FINDS
4 min |
September 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
Digging at the McDonald Ranch
In June of 2020, the Central Oregon Rock Collectors club went on a field trip to the McDonald Ranch near Ashwood, Oregon. The McDonald Ranch offers petrified wood, angelwing agate, and thundereggs.
2 min |
July 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
MAGNETITE: A NATURAL HISTORY
An Iron Oxide that Changed the World
10+ min |
July 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
TETRAHEDRITE-TENNANTITE: Which is Which?
Unassuming, handsome, and confusing minerals
7 min |
July 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
Amber and the Komboloi Tradition
Exploring the Science and Mindfulness Behind the Practice
10 min |
July 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
CHANNELING A MOTHER ROCK
Mineral Constituents of the Chert Complex
10+ min |
July 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
Cerro de Trincheras
Trail, Museum & Petroglyphs South of the Border in Sonora, Mexico
4 min |
July 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
Creating A Decorative Feature
BENCHTIPS
3 min |
July 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
STUDYING THE PAST OF Petrified Wood
Trust Plant Anatomy To Be Your Guide When Working In the Present
10+ min |
July 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
THE GARNET FAMILY
Spanning the Spectrum of Mineralogy
7 min |
July 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
Ugly Rocks Can Contain Beautiful Treasures
From the outward appearance of certain ironstone or siderite nodules, they might seem to be ugly-looking dirty rocks, but they often hide beautiful treasures inside.
3 min |
July 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
LABRADORITE A Feldspar Mineral with a Rainbow Inside
Collectors often dig labradorite as a colorful rock, but it is actually a mineral, not a rock. It is one of a half dozen varieties of feldspar divided into two groups that make up the crust of the earth. One group is the potassium feldspars, including microcline. The other group is a plagioclase feldspar, including labradorite.
7 min |
June 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
LEARNING FROM A Legend
VISITS TO LUCKY STRIKE MINE PRODUCE GREAT MEMORIES AND MATERIAL
8 min |
June 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
“ TOUCH THE MOON ” WITHOUT LEAVING EARTH
Discovering Similarites Between Space and the Upper Midwestern U.S.
10+ min |
June 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
GOLD MINING IN DAHLONEGA, GEORGIA
History and Panning Adventures
5 min |
June 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
THE NICKEL BEHIND THE NICKEL
The word “nickel” is a homonym with two distinct meanings. It refers to both our five-cent coin and an element. Everyone is familiar with the coin, but not necessarily with the element.
3 min |
June 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
The Golden Iron Mineral
PYRITE’S MANY CRYSTAL FORMS KEEP COLLECTORS FASCINATED
8 min |
June 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
Idaho Star Garnet
Brilliant colors enhance the beauty and add to the value of many of our gemstones, especially those that are clear or translucent. And I like any color… as long as it is red. For that reason, the blood-red ruby is about my favorite gemstone. And in museums around this country and in Europe I have seen carefully cut cabochons containing startling six-rayed stars that seem to slide over the surface of the stone as it is rotated in the light. It is no wonder that, for hundreds of years, the star ruby has been one of the favorite stones of royalty.
4 min |
June 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
New Discoveries in Newfoundland
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND ROCKHOUNDING HELP TO UNCOVER FASCINATING TREASURES AND HISTORY
6 min |
June 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
GEOLOGY IN THE NATIONAL PARKS
The Science Behind the Scenery
10+ min |
June 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
A New View of Mineral Museums
This year of 2021 certainly started out to be disappointing for many mineral collectors. We were all looking forward to a host of mineral-related activities. Instead, few mineral shows and mineral activities on the calendar remain, so the first months of this year were devoid of organized mineral activity.
6 min |
June 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
Captivated By Copper
Soldiers’ Discovery Leads to a Century of Mining at Pearl Handle Open Pit
7 min |
February 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
ROOSEVELT DAM AGATE: A Gem Loaded with History
The Roosevelt Dam agate is a very limited-occurrence lapidary material, uncovered during the excavation of the Theodore Roosevelt Dam in Arizona, hence the obvious name of Roosevelt Dam agate.
4 min |
February 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
GEORGIUS AGRICOLA'S: DE RE METALLICA
465 Years Old and Still Relevant
10+ min |
February 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
Trisparkle 12 Design Marks New Approach
I want to thank Jim Perkins for his many years of providing outstanding faceting designs for the Rock & Gem readership.
2 min |
February 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
Scientists Looking at a Possibly Undetected Volcano in Alaska
Is there a previously undiscovered volcano within Alaska’s Aleutian chain of islands? A team of scientists recently presented their findings surrounding this possibility during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
3 min |
February 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
QUARTZ
COMMON, BUT NOT CONVENTIONAL
8 min |
February 2021
Rock&Gem Magazine
Discovering the Splendor of SLAG
A pile of slag remaining from copper smelting operations of 1930s Cottonwood, Arizona is one area of focus for Minerals Research, Inc. (MRI), the company pursuing a 15-20 year process to remove the pile using innovative recovery technology.
10 min |