• Minerals used for time



Have you ever heard of the term gquartz watch? By using the mineral quartz, the watch is able to track time exactly.

By applying an electric current to quartz, the quartz turns into a vibrator that vibrates 32768 times per second.

By adjusting the electric current, it is possible to make the quartz vibrate one time per second.

This mineral is also used in cellphones, smartphones, computers, and even air conditioners to track time precisely.

• Artificial Minerals


• Sapphire

Sapphire is the second hardest gem after diamond and is highly heat resistent.

Artificial sapphire material is identical to natural sapphire, except it can be made without the flaws that are found in natural stones. Sapphire is used in windows of space shuttles, cover glasses of watches, and the nib of a pen.

• Ruby

The first artificial ruby was made in 1891 by Auguste Verneuil, a French scientist.

Also known as the Verneuil Process, this type of synthesis uses an aluminum oxide powder doped with trace elements to create synthetic corundum of various types.

It is also used to make synthetic spinel, although not as much nowadays as it is used for corundum. Rubies are currently used for reading DVD data.

• Diamond

The diamond is one of the most famous gems and also one of the hardest too.

It ranks top on the Mohs hardness scale and is a metastable allotrope of carbon. Tracy Hall announced the first synthetic diamond made in 1955 by using a belt press, which was capable of producing pressures above 10 GPa and temperatures above 2,000 ‹C .

The largest diamond he produced was only 0.15 mm acrossand it was too small and visually imperfect for jewelry, but usable in industrial abrasives.

In recent years, scientists are improving the size and hardness of these synthetic diamonds.

• Consideration

While researching about this topic, we were able to find out that there are many kinds of minerals close to our life since from ancient times.

We recognized that human are actually depending minerals a lot through out daily lives, and this research was a great opportunity for us to let us notice this.

When you look around, you can see that actually there are many more minerals around us in addition to the ones we have introduced in this website.

In addition, most of the machines such as televisions, computers, cars and Shinkansen are lumps of mineral. Other than that, many other products are made of minerals such as the tip of fountain pen, sprinkler, or even kitchen utensil.

What will happen if minerals completely disappered from our life? After researching for and making this site, I can now understand the importance of minerals in our lives.