That Which Sparkles
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| Figure 1 |
Lately, while taking my dog on one her numerous walks, I have been noticing an increase in the sparkles on the the side of the road and on the lawn near the road. Notice the center of figure 1. There has always been a few of these tiny shiny fragments but not this much. Even when I walked her in the dark with my headlamp, the reflection was quite impressive. My hypothesis is the town has a new source for their winter salt-sand mixture, one that has a high mica content, or more specifically muscovite (the mineral responsible for the sparkles). Of course to check this I would have to contact the town and they might think I am nutcase and also who has the time for that.
Muscovite, (KAl2(AlSi3O10)(F,OH)2) is a soft, platey, silicate mineral common in granitic type rocks. Flat, sheet, or platy silicate minerals are classified as phyllosilicates. Muscovite is colorless but can be lightly shaded green, brown, yellow, or even red unlike the other main mica, biotite (K(Mg,Fe)3AlSi3O10(F,OH)2), which is dark or black. Notice Figure 2 on my son's hand.
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| Figure 2 |
If you are still interested in muscovite you might be a closet geologist and I recommend reading a mineralogy textbook. One last thing, the name muscovite comes from the use of the mineral for glass in Russia.
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| Figure 3 |
And the Winner is...
NOVEMBER 2012
Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907) was a Russian chemist famous for creating the first periodic table of elements. He was born near Tobolsk, Siberia to Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleev and Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleev and had between 11 and 17 siblings (depending on source). Mendeleev was a professor when he arranged the 63 known elements by increasing atomic mass and grouping them by similar properties in 1869. His great insight was he predicted the existence of three elements he named ekasilicon, ekaaluminium and ekaboron (germanium, gallium and scandium) and left spaces on the table for them.
Other achievements of Mendeleev include the investigation of the thermal expansion of liquids and the composition of petroleum. In 1893 he was appointed Director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures where he developed new standards for vodka production (must be 40% alcohol by volume).
Though Mendeleev received many awards throughout his career including the Copley Medal from the Royal Society of London, he was never awarded a Nobel Prize due in part to rivalries with other scientists of the time including one with Svante Arrhenius. Mendeleev probably got the last laugh, however, since he is more known now than any of the others that were jealous of him plus he has a crater on the Moon named in his honor.
