Argentopyrite Mineral

Good day dear Hive Community, first of all I would like to welcome you all to my new contribution and hope you had a day that brought some positive experiences into your life! In this post, I would like to bring a mineral a little closer and hope you can expand your knowledge.

You can see here a specimen of the mineral Argentopyrite, which is rather rare and can also be counted from the chemical composition to the mineral class of sulfides or sulfo salts. Worldwide there are only 50 documented places of discovery and the origin can be traced back to a hydrothermal way where it can be found in silver-containing mines and the first specimens were found during the 19th century in the Czech Republic by the German mineralogist Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen (1809 - 1876) and his parents had a friendship with the well-known poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749 - 1832) at that time, which is why they decided to name their child after him and even decided to choose Goethe as his namesake. He had a particularly great interest in natural research and his greatest interest was in minerals and to pursue his passion he traveled a lot and during his explorations he made numerous discoveries which he recorded in his writings. After analyzing Argentopyrite a little more closely, he found out that the mineral contains traces of silver and this was also decisive for the naming and he named it after the Latin word Argentum for silver as well as some external properties of the mineral pyrite. Although the mineral would be interesting as ore for the extraction of silver, it is too rare for this application, however, it is popular in the circles of collectors and here it is important to note that it is one of the minerals that can change the appearance on the air over time and therefore you should always store it in a closed container. In addition to the content of silver, it also contains traces of iron or sulfur and the typical color of the mineral is gray and, as already mentioned, it can happen that due to the influence of air, it changes the color and takes on different colorful shades and in addition, it often has a shiny surface.

Thanks a lot for stopping by and I hope you could learn something new about minerals! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens.