Word for the day….let’s rock

I found this word in a newsletter called Smart Planet, basically skutterudite is a mix of minerals.

Sounds cool, eh?
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skutterudite (mineralogy) (Co,Ni)

As3 A tin-white mineral with metallic luster composed of cobalt and nickel arsenides; crystallizes in the isometric system but commonly is massive; hardness is 5.5-6 on Mohs scale, and specific gravity is 6.6; it is a minor ore of cobalt and nickel.

This series occurs in medium-temperature veins lining walls, associated with silver and related silver-hued cobalt and nickel minerals, often interlocked and all looking much alike.

Crystal description
Usually massive and granular. Crystals may develop, particularly on surfaces in contact with a calcite vein filling, but they are dull and uneven. Cube and octahedron faces are most common, sometimes with dodecahedrons and pyritohedrons.

Physical properties
Tin-white. Luster metallic; hardness 5Ɖ-6; specific gravity 6.1-6.8; fracture granular; cleavage none. Brittle.

Composition
Triarsenides of cobalt, nickel, and iron. Arsenic amounts to 75% of the weight; the balance is made up by the metals. This series was formerly known under the name smaltite-chloanthite and was considered to be completely isomorphous with a third iron triarsenide. Subsequent studies indicate that only the cobalt triarsenide actually exists in a pure state and cobalt, iron, and nickel are always present in the others. This suggests that skutterudite should be the name for the high-cobalt end-member (formerly smaltite), and the others should be known (depending upon their analyzed composition) as nickelian skutterudite (instead of chloanthite) and ferroan skutterudite (instead of the discredited “arsenoferrite”).

(There’s a nifty picture of it on the website listed below.)

source cited: http://www.answers.com/topic/skutterudite

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I didn’t make this up! I really didn’t!
Diane T.

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