Sunday Quiz on precious stones
Jurassic Park’s story starts with this fossilised tree resin.
START THE QUIZ
1 / 10 |
On July 11 1893, Japanese entrepreneur Mikimoto Kokichi, after many failures and near bankruptcy, was able to farm and create the very first artificial version of a valuable gemstone. This was a huge revolution in jewellery and once, on meeting Mikimoto, Thomas Edison said he had achieved what was “supposed to be biologically impossible”. What had Mikimoto created that naturally occurs when some dirt irritates a mollusc?
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Helenite is a green obsidian-like gemstone that was created accidentally after a certain natural phenomenon occurred in 1980. Local timber workers were using acetylene torches to free salvage equipment when they noticed that the heat was transforming the ash and rock into a beautiful green colour. It has since been recreated away from the source, but it gets its name from a geographical entity in Washington whose activity in 1980 caused devastation. From what entity do we get helenite?
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In 2014, scientists at Bayerisches Geoinstitut in Germany successfully created diamond gemstones using much higher pressure than found in the earth’s core, where diamonds are usually formed. The starting material was something you would see on your breakfast table. The process is messier and slower, but proves that carbon in any form can be converted. What did the scientists turn into diamond that you usually have either crunchy or smooth and on toast?
4 / 10 |
Chrysoberyl is a gemstone that is an aluminate of beryllium. Normally yellowish-green in colour, there is a variety known as alexandrite that has the unique characteristic of pleochroism, which is an optical phenomenon that depends on how you view the gemstone. What difference would you notice in alexandrite depending on whether you viewed it under natural sunlight or artificial incandescent light?
Answer : Different colours, (greenish in daylight, reddish in incandescent light)
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5 / 10 |
This gemstone is a form of lignite. It is derived from wood that has changed under extreme pressure. Its English name comes from the French word jaiet. It gets its characteristic dark colour thanks to high carbon concentration, which led to its name being used as an adjective to mean ‘as dark a black as possible’. What is the name of this gemstone?
6 / 10 |
Painite is a very rare borate mineral, with only two specimens ever having been cut into gemstones. Discovered by a gem dealer after whom it was named, the mineral is extremely rare as it contains both zirconium and boron, two elements that rarely interact naturally. Painite is found only in the Mogok area, where rubies were once mined. Which country, whose capital was Rangoon till 2006 and is Naypyidaw now, is this region in?
7 / 10 |
Biogenic gemstones are those that are formed from an organic source created through natural biological processes rather than geological processes. The most common one is pearl. Certain ammonites are fossilised in such a way that they become a type of gemstone called ammolite. A rare biogenic gemstone is fossilised tree resin, which has been valued since Neolithic times and written about since the fourth century BCE. It is the softest gemstone. What is this gemstone that was the starting point of the Jurassic Park franchise?
8 / 10 |
These two gemstones are essentially the same, with the colour varying due to different minerals as trace impurities. They are both types of corundum, but there is one name for red ones and another one for those of any other colour. The red colour comes from the presence of chromium, and this gem’s name comes from the Latin word for ‘red’. There is a theory that the other gem’s name comes from the Sanskrit for ‘Sacred to Saturn’. What are these two gemstones?
9 / 10 |
Garnets are silicate minerals that are almost always a deep red in colour. The most famous of these gems is the carbuncle, which has been mentioned many times in the Bible, in a Sherlock Holmes story, by Shakespeare in Hamlet and a character in the Final Fantasy series. The name ‘garnet’ comes from the old French words for ‘grain, seed’, because they looked like the seeds of a certain fruit. Which fruit’s seeds give the red garnet its name?
10 / 10 |
Before huge corporations started taking over the diamond mining industry and making it into the billion-dollar enterprise it is now, historically diamonds were actually found on the surface in alluvial deposits in south India. For a long time, till the 18th century CE, India was the biggest source of diamonds. The banks of one particular river in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, were a prolific area for discovering diamonds. Which river is this that at one time used to deposit diamonds on its banks?
