Pineapple Quartz

I think maybe they are natural. Here's an article:

It's glass just like cherry quartz and is also being marketed as lemon quartz - I've seen other colors too - a tanzanite blue/purple and an aqua.

Mj

From the article, it looks like the defining characteristic is the shape/formation of the crystals, rather than a color. So making (smoothed) beads of them would would destroy its value. Was that right?

Tina

OOH, haven't seen the Tanzanite color, have to look for that. I have some of the original color, a mint green which was faceted and looked sort of like Aquamarine. Patti

continuing debate, i guess. there is a quartz crystal called pineapple quartz. you might wanna google it and read about it...make up your own mind?

Tink posted a link. It describes a formation of crystals, rather than a color. In other words, if you took that pineapple quartz and ground down the characteristics so you'd have beads, what you had left would be just plain quartz crystals.

Tina

Thanks, Barb. I'm putting it on my wish list. Patti

Next question; glass made from just silica is quartz glass... is it REAL quartz glass, or is even that a misnomer?

Never heard of "quartz glass". Glass is molten, quartz is formed in crystals.

Tina

I'm not sure what you mean by "REAL quartz glass". Quartz is silica, and glass is silica; the difference is in the internal structure. Quartz is crystalline, while glass is not. I suspect (not being a glassblower!) that the term "quartz glass" simply means that there are no *other* minerals added to the mix -- that it's made from pure molten silica quartz.

Celine

No quartz is always a crystaline form or structure. That part of the definition.

Tina

We're talking about pure silica glass, though, which is called "quartz glass".

Or maybe that was just me?

Anyway, my question was whether anyone knows if the "cherry quartz" is actually quartz glass, meaning pure silica glass.

You can argue over whether that's really quartz if you want, but I didn't name it that, that's just what it's called, so convincing me wouldn't change much.

Ohhh! Nope, just wondering if there was any actual merit to calling it "quartz" at all.

I found a bunch of sites when I was curious about retrofitting a kiln I saw for sale on eBay; I wanted to enclose the elements in quartz tubes, to make it so I couldn't electrocute myself. Found out it would cost waaaay too much... that stuff's expensive!

Like quartz windows for hypersonic aircraft.

Mary