the.com/quartz
the second most abundant mineral, quietly keeping your watch honest
means A hard, crystalline mineral made of silicon dioxide, found everywhere from beach sand to mountain veins, and prized for keeping precise time in watches.
from From German 'Quarz,' which mining folk of central Europe used for the stubborn crystals they dug up. The German word itself is older and murky — possibly traced back to a West Slavic root like Czech 'tvrdý' (hard) or a related word for a hard, knotty thing — but the trail goes cold, so its deeper ancestry is honestly uncertain.
- keeps time
- vibrates at exact frequency when zapped with electricity
- by volume
- makes up roughly 12 percent of Earth's crust
- hardness
- scratches glass, rated 7 on Mohs scale
- sand origin
- most beach sand is weathered quartz
- piezoelectric
- squeeze it and it generates voltage
brazilian rose quartz — the world's largest rose quartz deposits, mined in minas gerais state since the 1980s
madagascar amethyst geodes — produces over 90% of the world's commercial amethyst quartz, especially from fianarantsoa region
arkansas quartz crystal — mount ida in montgomery county is the only place in the u.s. producing commercial quartz crystals