Welcome back to the channel everybody! Question for you: do you know what an agate is and if you
were to see a photo of an agate would you be able to identify it? Would you be able to identify all
agates? What about jaspers? Do you know what an agate really is or what a jasper really is?
I think a lot of people out there, if you're watching this video, maybe you said yes to those.
Maybe you think it's a clean-cut, clear topic. And I'm kind of here to tell you that you're wrong,
it's not. Uh, a lot of it is very subjective, it's up to the person looking at something
and we're gonna try to unmuddy the water a little bit. You know there's a lot of common names that
people have for this stuff and I have behind me right here on the table a pretty good selection of
different uh agates and jasper and things that are a mix of the two. And I'm really going to try to
unmuddy the waters because I see a lot of incorrect things. I see a lot of people being like
"Actually!". Um, put all that aside, let's look at what we have here. And if you stay tuned for
the whole video, if you learned something I would love it if you would hit the subscribe button,
it means a lot to me as I try to grow this channel and get the word out there about some
of these different topics. So let's look at this. Well, what do you think of this display of rocks?
Is everything here jasper? Is everything here an agate? What if I told you there
were a couple of things in here that were neither one of those? What do you think,
are you able to easily pick those out and uh are you sure about your uh, assessment?
We're going to show, get really into this. I'll show you what we have here but first
off let's lay some ground rules because we've got to kind of talk about what all of this stuff is.
You have rocks which are made up of minerals. Minerals are made up of elements. Okay that's
everything, all rocks that you would ever see it's it's gonna land in those cat... three categories.
Within that, when we start to talk about agates and jasper they're all microcrystalline quartz or
microcrystalline quartzite. That's what they all are. The micro part refers to not being
able to see the crystalline structure. So, the difference is: can you see the crystals? Okay,
do you see the crystals? No you don't because you would need a microscope to see these crystals.
Can you see the crystals? Absolutely you can see the crystals.
This being just quartz.
There we go. That's the difference. However how about something that would
trick you up? What about this?
Can you see the crystals?
You kind of can. What would you call this? Is this microcrystalline quartz or quartz?
I hope you understand what I'm doing here which is I'm trying to lay a little bit of groundwork:
that some of this stuff is in the eye of the person looking at it, and it's probably not a
good practice to spend your free time trying to correct people. Okay, there's a lot of that in
the rockhounding world. A lot of that nonsense exists on Facebook and in comment sections.
And typically uh the ones that I see, everybody's wrong. So let's try to right that ship. So
we know what rocks are made out of. We know a little bit about micro crystalline versus crystal.
All agates and jasper are going to be microcrystalline for the most part, we're going
to get into that, for the most part. It's hard to also talk about translucency...what's translucent,
what's transparent, what is opaque? So, but we kind of have to get into that subject a little
bit. And that's another thing where what I think might be opaque and what somebody else might think
is opaque and then are two different things. And then also we have the issue of things that kind of
straddle the line between tran...semi transparent and opaque. Like what if it's half the rock you
know? It gets...the waters get muddy! The waters, the waters get muddy. Well, for the most part all
of these things are silica, right? So your uh your quartz crystals, your microcrystalline quartz,
um it's all silica. Now, the way agates typically form is you're gonna have a crack, a void, an air
bubble in like a igneous rock. Water that has a lot of dissolved silica in it washes into that,
washes out, washes in, washes out. As it does that you get small deposition of silica in that void
and over hundreds of thousands of years- we actually don't know how long it takes for that
silica goo to fully solidify, but when you, when have, when you have that and you have different
minerals present within that silica rich water you get things like this, right? You get that,
that classic banded agate appearance, right? You can get agates that kind of look
look like this. We have that banding running through there, it's kind of weird.
That's basically what all agates come down to: silica rich waters getting
into an open space and solidifying. Typically your agates will be found
in igneous rocks but you can also, they've been found in sedimentary rocks, but it's more common
in areas with that volcanic activity that would have produced igneous rocks like we have here.
What this is is a piece of basalt and what we have here is an agate that formed...
sorry about that, what we have here is an agate that formed in an air bubble in basalt.
How cool is that? It's an agate in its natural state.
Of course, you start to have erosive features in things and you know, agates going into creeks
and stuff like that, they get tumbled up, it gets more and more difficult. Here's a good example of
an agate that formed in a crack, a seam, a seam agate. And you can see that different deposition
of silica rich waters that had different colors of minerals in there and you can actually see
the impression of the rock that this formed between, on both sides. Jasper on the other
hand are generally going to be more opaque, right? So here we have a piece of jasper
and here we have a piece of chalcedony, which doesn't have much uh extra mineral to it. It's
really just a very pure micro crystalline quartz. I mean, you can see there's a little bit of color,
there's a little bit of iron in here most likely getting that orangish color.
But you can see the difference between something that is totally opaque and
something that you could start to get into that translucent, transparent look.
Your jaspers, like that, and that, and that, and uh we'll talk about this guy here.
How about these two, right? Look at this jasper.
What do you think formed this? How do you think jasper came to be? Typically, it's going
to be particulate, like you know little eroded things, that are now cemented together by silica
and that's why you get these different colors and stuff to it. Now this isn't
an identification video. We have one of those, I'll link it right up there.
Now, what's your assessment of this? What would you call this rock?
Is this an agate or is it jasper? I've heard people call these things jasp-agates. I've heard
people call things like this claspers. [laughs] I've heard all kinds of things. Okay. With a rock
like this I would say the answer is somewhere in the middle. You could call this an agate, you
could call it jasper, you could call it jaspagate, you could call it uh microcrystalline uh quartz,
you could call it silica. I mean you could call kind of whatever. So they're not really a right or
wrong answer with this because there's portions of it that are uh very kind of clear and banded and
light could shine through it, and there's parts that that would not, will not be able to.
You can also have some very clear agates.
You can have agates that have different features.
That has uh botryoidal features on the inside and slight pluming around the edges,
very complex. Or you know it's, it's a big, big world out there, right?
Do you see anything here that wouldn't fall into that category?
We kind of have an idea now of what agates generally look like. You know they can be all
kinds of things and people will use uh the common words freely and I don't think they should really
be corrected. I'm not one to uh get hung up on language. But how about this? What do you think?
This would typically be called carnelian. It can come in a number of hues but essentially
carnelian is a microcrystalline quartz - silica with iron that gets this
beautiful orangish red appearance to it. Some people would call this an agate,
some people would try to correct that person and say it's carnelian,
but does that matter? I say it doesn't. It doesn't matter, doesn't freaking matter to me. Um,
okay a lot of people would call this here, piece of picture jasper this was sent to me,
some of you may have been eyeballing this guy back here... What do you think of this picture jasper?
Psych not picture jasper. This is a piece of rhyolite.
But, could these two be cousins? I don't know, you tell me. They're not but uh you know, I think
that's interesting to see that type of similarity and stuff and how confusing this can get.
Moving right along, what about this guy?
Can you see the crystals? Can you see a crystalline structure in there?
So is it an agate? Is it microcrystalline? We have clear silicas have deposited
and then, you know this, this outside and then crystals formed on the inside.
So is this transparent, translucent or is this opaque?
Here's that same material.
Right? You can see little dendrites in there. Sorry about that.
I'm not going to take up too much more of your time but I'm just trying to illustrate some of
these things and kind of prove a point, right? That agates and jasper, quartz,
microcrystalline silica, all of this stuff: it's not, it's not as cut cut and dry.
It's not as clear all the time. What about this? What do you think about this? Agate?
If we know that agate has to be
or is supposed to be microcrystalline which means you can't see the crystals,
what would you call this? We have here clear crystal structure. We also have some
portions that don't have crystal structure. You can see the void in which this formed.
It reminds me a little bit of the whole thunderegg and geode thing, right? Like a
a thunderegg can be a geode but a geode can't be a thunderegg... is that how that goes? A thunderegg
can be a geode but a geode can't be a thunderegg. Um, essentially that's in reference to the void...
We're getting a little in the weeds here, I know.
Grab one more thing up here.
Thunderegg, geode. A thunderegg that could be geoded. Solid, not solid, partially solid.
You can also have agatized things. So we have a piece of agatized wood here.
A piece that I collected.
What about this? Is this an agate?
It's not transparent. It's not translucent. It's clearly banded. It's definitely silica.
Maybe in a future video we'll get into what formed some of these different types of agates
and how it's possible for for these things to come into existence. But for right now
I just kind of wanted to do a little show and tell, laying the groundwork for future videos,
future conversations here on the channel. I appreciate you stopping by, looking at some rocks.
I hope I managed to clear up some of these things for you and uh kind of really showcase
some of what agates are and jasper. These, these different rocks and minerals are,
well, it's not always uh a perfect textbook example. But uh thanks for coming by, hit the
subscribe button, hit the like. I appreciate you. Catch you on the next video everybody. Take care.