Musee de Mineralogie

September 9, 2015

This museum, which is found at the Jardin des Plantes* along with several others (including the Musee de Paleontologie et Anatomie Comparee, which I reviewed in my previous blog), was closed during my entire stay last year, so I was glad to see that it had since reopened.

The exhibit size is much smaller than that of the aforementioned museum, but I enjoyed it very much. In fact, it was just the right size to give you a lot to look at without wearing you out, and the price was right too:  six euro.

I loved the combination of aesthetics and science!  In addition to the specimens themselves, some of which I'll show below, there was a lot of good information available in both printed and video format (in French, but pretty easy to follow).

First, there was a series of very, very large crystals.  This specimen of quartz with tourmaline inclusions weighs in at 470 kg (a little over 1000 lbs):

This is just a small portion of another quartz crystal that was larger still; much larger:

Here is a lovely sulfur crystal, with the shadow of a neighboring crystal of copper (now we're dealing with "normal" sized crystals, but still larger than typically found):

and here is the copper crystal, with a little bit of green patina.

Here is a crystal of "smithsonite" (a form of zinc carbonate) which looks to me like two figures hugging:

This is a slice of a stalactite (or stalagmite?) consisting primarily of rhodocrosite (a form of manganese carbonate).  The commentary stated that manganese often imparts a red color to a mineral, but that many factors play a part in coloration.

Near the beginning of the section on polishing and cutting of crystals, we were presented with this solid sphere of quartz (about 6" in diameter, maybe larger?):

Here is part of the gemstone display, showing cut and uncut forms of the crystals:

This led to a few examples of the uses of gemstones and stone inlays in art.  This is a small detail of a large tabletop, with a bird containing a lot of lapis inlay:

Here are some BIG chunks of gold from Australia, presumably found in situ in this form.  The larger one is over 5 kg, i.e. about 11 pounds.  Yes, it's quite a collection they have here.  There were some golfball-sized chunks of platinum too.

Here is a somewhat smaller gold nugget, from California.  The weight wasn't given, but it was several inches long.  

The following are a few other specimens that I found especially cool looking!  They are, in order, a malachite/azurite specimen from Arizona, crocoite (lead chromate), and stibnite (antimony trisulfide)!

The commentary explained that, in general, it takes a very long time for large crystals of most of these substances to form, and that small variations in temperature, moisture content, purity etc. will interfere with growth, so typically it gets nowhere near this far.  So, as I said, a pretty impressive collection.  

*Another nice thing about the Jardin de Plantes:  They have clearly marked public recycling bins.  My building doesn't have recycling (quelle honte!), so last week I toted my recycling down there to dispose of it properly.  (Glass is easy; there are lots of bins on the streets--all those wine bottles, I guess--but paper and plastic are handled separately.)