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What kind of rock is this?
- Thread starter adder7712
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Looks crystalline in nature.
Try browsing: http://chemistry.about.com/od/growingcrystals/ig/Crystal-Photo-Gallery/
Try browsing: http://chemistry.about.com/od/growingcrystals/ig/Crystal-Photo-Gallery/
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I guess it depends on where you live and where he found it. If I found something like this outside my house, there would be a 99% chance it's a chunk of rock salt from a city snowplow. Without more details it's hard to tell. Put it in a glass of tap water overnight and see if it dissolves.
1. A road located where? Rocks and minerals aren't evenly distributed around the world. Knowing where it was found could be useful at narrowing down what it is. For example, you're more likely to find mineralized salts near here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_lake
2. Quartz isn't soluble in water. Salt is. So see if it dissolves in water. If you want to minimize visible damage, pick the worst looking face. If it dissolves in water, it may be any of various salts (halite, epsomite, alum, etc.), but it definitely won't be quartz.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsomite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alum
I'm not a rock or mineral specialist, but I've seen halite and other mineralized salts before.
Looks too cubic to be quartz... quartz usually forms hexagonal shaped crystals.
Very difficult to say from the photograph, but my guess would be common salt. It looks the right colour, and it's the right shape. Give it a lick and see!
(I'm a geology student)
Very difficult to say from the photograph, but my guess would be common salt. It looks the right colour, and it's the right shape. Give it a lick and see!
(I'm a geology student)
Reminds me of a scene in the book "The Hot Zone" about when samples of a disease that killed monkeys were sent to Ft. Detrick back in 1989 and the researchers there didn't know what they had. A couple of them tried wafting flasks of the mysterious samples to see if they recognized the smell. Fortunately for them, they were fooling around with one of the very few forms of Ebola that aren't harmful to humans.