Fascinating Structures within Slices from Dark Tourmaline Crystals

Abstract

Our world is full of hidden treasures waiting to be discovered. Every researcher knows that new dimensions can open if one looks at the world with curiosity and perhaps in new ways. An example of this happened when the fantastic internal morphologies of dark tourmaline crystals were first discovered. It has been observed that outwardly black tourmalines become beautifully colored if you simply grind them thin enough (Black 1971). The first report about the discovery of color in a thin section of a dark tourmaline, from Zillertal in Austria, was by von Zallinger in 1779. The preparation of a thin section of a dark tourmaline is an exciting endeavor. You have to cut the tourmaline (fig. 1) into millimeter-thick slices with a diamond saw and then carefully grind them thinner. Again and again the initially pitch-black slice is held in front of a strong lamp to see if something becomes visible. Tension increases until the magical moment when the first colors and structures emerge from the dark. This moment remains a moving one for me, within Slices from Dark Tourmaline Crystals