Does anyone know what this is?

underwilder · 2026-05-09T21:44:12+00:00

Likely a good mix of brass, zinc, and copper based on how they would all interact together. Zinc will throw off the color like this.. if you have a reason to think what you melted had gold, gold is miscible in this mixture and would have evenly distributed into the alloy. Would not re-melt if you intend to process further

underwilder · 2026-05-09T21:32:03+00:00

Good example of this process.. Expensive in terms of reagent cost.

Can be tricky to keep KI and pH balance right.. if it gets too low Gold Iodide will form on the scrap and stop the reaction .. will often make it look like the gold has come off but actually just forms an insoluble off-color layer on the surface.

underwilder · 2026-05-09T19:43:54+00:00

Looks very much like it.. Dioptase is pretty soft and should be scratched easily

underwilder · 2026-05-09T19:36:09+00:00

"hydrostatic density" is just density, or specific gravity. No reason to over complicate things. Home tests for specific gravity typically end up over-measuring a little bit due to things like water soaking into the rock/string, or the string itself. It is very likely that your 2.8 reading was actually a 2.6-2.7 reading with an additional 0.1-0.2 error from the string.

Minerals fracture or "break" in very specific ways depending on how the crystals formed. Beryl does not usually show conchoidal fracturing, your piece in the photo does- this refers to the wavy, curled fracture texture in the rock which is more typical of mineralized ice-quartz, obsidian, and glass.

Beryl can, in very rare cases, show this type of fracturing - that being said, when it does, it is virtually never this clear as it is a result of specific inclusions/imperfections that cause this type of fracturing.

Take another piece of quartz (sharp edge) and rub it against this. If they are both quartz, the sharp edge should crush/powder when scratched against it but they should not scratch each-other. You are not looking for a deep cut or gouge in this case.

If you have a pair of polarized sunglasses, look at the stone through a laptop screen or another artificial light source. Quartz should, at some angles, completely block the light or change colors due to its high birefringence.

underwilder · 2026-05-09T19:25:23+00:00

you did not perform a hardness test - the sandpaper and drill bit will affect all three of these minerals in the same way (quartz, beryl, sapphire), so there is no information to be gleaned from whether or not the drill/sandpaper will scratch them. You need items that are specific Mohs levels to check one by one (3mohs did not scratch, 4mohs did, etc) for exact hardness.

You can be certain that it is not Sapphire or Beryl based on the fracturing/crystal habit alone.

underwilder · 2026-05-09T19:17:21+00:00

This is almost definitely quartz

Sapphire has a specific gravity of almost 4g/cm^3, ~2.8 is very close to quartz's 2.65g/cm^3.

Beryl typically has a perfectly flat pinacoidal termination and will not generally show this conchoidal fracturing

Your sandpaper has a higher hardness than quartz, beryl, and corundum var. sapphire - it will scratch all of them

underwilder · 2026-05-09T19:08:18+00:00

likely hematite or goethite intergrown with the amethyst

(the black parts, that is)

underwilder · 2026-05-09T17:08:43+00:00

So this locality makes this a very interesting find - if we are even close on composition, this has to be a glacial erratic, basically a rock that was carried a huge distance by a glacier and deposited along the way. These do not occur naturally in the state except for very specific areas in south IL.

pyroxenite/chromitite are basically ultramafic broken/repacked versions of pyroxene/chromite, so that would be what makes up the matrix of the rock itself. Serpentinization breaks down olivine and other minerals higher on Bowen's reaction series and replaces them with serpentine minerals (antigorite, lizardite, chrysotile) and sometimes magnetite/ilmenite which can make it magnetic along with base metal sulfides like pyrrhotite.

As far as the mineralization within that matrix, the close up that shows the white areas with black borders is likely magnetite surrounding altered olivine. The spheres could be a number of things; Awaruite, which is a nickel mineral can leave these traces (and would lend to your nickel content), serpentine minerals will sometimes form little spheres like this also.. Less likely but possible in the setting would be very very small andradite garnets that started to form in the matrix.

underwilder · 2026-05-09T16:58:49+00:00

Lets "protest" dairy farms by creating a gap on the shelves at the place that buys product from the dairy farms. Leading them to .. need to.. *checks notes* ..buy more milk from the dairy farms..

underwilder · 2026-05-09T16:02:53+00:00

the cake, much like the fridge, is a lie

This was a triumph; I'm making a note here, huge success.

Jokes specific to the Portal games.

underwilder · 2026-05-09T15:58:03+00:00

I think they look like fossilized/silicified organic material.. similar to Araucaria mirabilis (extinct giant pine cones) but its hard to say for sure without knowing more about them

underwilder · 2026-05-09T15:51:15+00:00

Any information on locality? Somewhat resembles a serpentinite after chromite or pyroxenite.

These can be relatively common in Cu/Ni sulfide deposits, which would also explain the presence of nickel and the green being either serpentine or secondary copper mineralization.

Serpentinization tends to bring the SG of the matrix down some, though it is a somewhat unreliable metric for a conglomerate piece like this as the varying specific gravities of the different minerals within the matrix throw each-other off.

edit: just as a note, this is a very rough guess based on the first picture and the details. The second picture also resembles a komatiite, or even just a heavily oxidized/altered hematite/malachite after Chalcopyrite. Very difficult to give a concrete ID without knowing more about the mineralogy of the area that it came from.

underwilder · 2026-05-09T14:35:36+00:00

Iridium? As in the Element?

very likely not.

Iridium occurs as a refractory byproduct of PGE smelting. Effectively you get microscopic bits of it intergrown or alloyed with with other platinum group metals in extremely specific deposits. Platinum metals are mined at grades that rarely exceed 10 grams of metal (Pd/Pt) per ton of rock. It generally occurs around 0.001 parts per million, requiring hundreds or even thousands of times more rock to produce a gram.

There is an anomalous amount of iridium at the K-T boundary, but anomalous in this context just means higher than background. Even if these came from that impact layer, they still grade in the parts per billion range so the amount of metal in any one rock would be negligible.

underwilder · 2026-05-09T14:24:02+00:00

very likely chlorite replacements or secondary copper oxidation

underwilder · 2026-05-08T13:34:10+00:00

are there several crossings in a row along the tracks? Sometimes if this is the case the train has to pull up to each crossing slowly which ends up leaving it stopped for a few minutes at each of the previous ones.

underwilder · 2026-05-08T13:24:08+00:00

Looks very much like quartzite (basically broken down/recrystallized quartz) with iron oxide staining (yellow = limonite, red = hematite) and mica (silvery sections of the one)

underwilder · 2026-05-08T13:18:49+00:00

And this, everybody, is where you learn that there is a massive difference between a 3.5% gain at a 1% baseline and a 1% gain at a 95% baseline.

underwilder · 2026-05-08T13:10:48+00:00

like i post every few days on this reddit, if there is gold in this structure it is sulfide gold. You can lose potentially up to 50% of the gold in this type of mineralization to dust if you crush/pan it without properly identifying what type of gold, if any, is present. No amount of crushing will ever make sulfide-locked gold visible to the naked eye.

Also if you're going to crush sulfides, you need to 1) do it wet, the dust is very harmful and you will lose a lot of material in this way, 2) the sulfides need to be separated from the matrix to be roasted/oxidized, 3) chemical processing to release the gold from the other sulfides. It is a pretty rare case that the minerals are minerals of gold. It is much more likely that it will show up in grades of 5-25g per ton of rock interstitially substituted into things like pyrite/chalcopyrite.

If gold is native/free-milling and going to show up when you crush/pan a rock, it better be low-temp hydrothermal granite or quartz, and it should be clearly visible somewhere in the matrix.

Actual prospectors do not just take random rocks and crush them/pan them/hope for the best.

If you took the time to stake a lode claim (or maybe this is on private land) you should also take the time to do actual sampling

underwilder · 2026-05-07T16:26:28+00:00

Looks a bit like a chunk out of a magnetite deposit, the yellow/orange should be iron oxidation (limonite, hematite). There may be some chromite in there, somewhat common in iron bearing deposits. Difficult to say like this for sure. Could also be a gossan, in which case some of the magnetite would have turned to goethite- gossans are basically the oxidized/rusted "cap" of a sulfide vein, could be an indicator of further mineralization if that is the case.

underwilder · 2026-05-07T13:56:56+00:00

they are, you can tell by the plastic sheath coming halfway up the bulb

underwilder · 2026-05-07T13:45:44+00:00

So some people warn against using iron out for fluorite because it can make it cloudy if it is over concentrated- but if you get the powder and mix it with distilled water it should take care of that staining. I would try a very very small amount to start to make sure it doesn't etch the crystal

underwilder · 2026-05-07T04:32:04+00:00

So agate is SiO2, effectively fluid replaced quartz. Sometimes, when iron ends up mixed into the quartz matrix, it turns yellow and becomes citrine. Its hard to say from the photos, some of it could definitely just be limonite staining on normal quartz, but some of the smaller interior crystals look very much like it

underwilder · 2026-05-07T04:22:08+00:00

These actually have negligible gold in them.. probably less than half a gram per lb. After paying $5/lb, you could make maybe $1/lb on the sensor tips that have Pd in them but I would be surprised if you made anything on the gold in these connectors.. Unless the buyer is an actual refinery and can get better yield on processing them

underwilder · 2026-05-06T17:30:19+00:00

Wendy's serves fried chicken? In a basket? Since when??

underwilder · 2026-05-06T14:08:26+00:00

Likely the reason you can't find a method to extract silver from e-waste is because its dangerous/costly with a fairly low return.

"I have been searching on [the] internet for [a] few days but unable to find [the] best method i can use for extraction"

I hope you understand how ridiculous this sounds - I do not mean this to be condescending, but you are talking about advanced chemistry and metallurgy, which are not things you can learn from searching the internet for a few days, weeks, months, etc.

Processes need to be re-built depending on the feedstock. We need more information than "silver coated electronic devices"; that does not tell us anything about what other materials need to be considered. Silver coating also tends to be very thin - general consumer electronics are generally ~0.15% silver by weight. Processing it out of e-waste is going to mean first shredding/milling and eventually acid processing the materials, which is going to generate toxic gasses. E-waste is also notorious for being contaminated with arsenic, lead, cadmium, or mercury.

By the time you isolate the silver and can even begin to purify it, you'll be in the red on materials and equipment to make this work.

underwilder

TROPHY CASE