Natural Artifacts

A collection of natural things I’ve gathered — stones, minerals, and curiosities. Each entry has the photographs, what it actually is, where it comes from, its history, and the chemistry and minerals hiding inside it (including why it looks the way it does).

Collection

• White Quartz Pebble — a milky-white tumbled quartz pebble; why pure quartz turns out white.
• Silvery Flaky Rock (Mica Schist) — a light, sparkly metamorphic rock; why it shines from only certain angles.
• Seashells — Bivalves — small clam/cockle shells; are they the same type, and how a shell is built.
• Shell Collection — Top & Bottom Views — the whole shell set; what the rib and band patterns tell you.
• Tiny Spiral Snail (& an Operculum) — how a logarithmic spiral and its bands come about from one simple rule.
• Four Fragments — Top & Bottom Views — silica pebbles, an iron-rich chip, and a shell piece; the history of each.
• Cowrie Shell (& a Dark Find) — how a cowrie polishes itself to a porcelain shine; once used as currency.
• Tower Shells — high-spired snails; one parameter turns a flat coil into a tower.
• Mussels, Cockles & Mother-of-Pearl — a mixed tray of bivalves; what each is and the shared CaCO₃ recipe.
• Jingle Shells — thin, almost-transparent saddle oysters; why they’re see-through and what the hole is for.
• Black Fragments — What Element? — dark shell pieces; the element is calcium, and why they look black.
• Two Pebbles — One with a White Band — the band is a healed quartz vein.
• The Pebble with Lines — sedimentary layering; lines as time made visible.
• Pale Pebble with a Tiny “Fern” — a silica pebble carrying a manganese dendrite that mimics a plant.
• The Shiny Chip — a silica flake; why conchoidal fracture shines.
• The Blue-Grey Chip — chert/chalcedony; weathered cortex vs fresh interior.
• What Gives a Shell Its Colours — pigment, structural iridescence, and staining, all at once.
• Brittle Iron-Rich Fragments — ironstone/laterite; why weathered iron rock is brittle.
• A Small Clam — a tiny ribbed clam with reddish rays, top and bottom.
• Pale Green-Yellow Pebble — a fine sandstone/quartzite; what its egg shape records.
• Dark Domed Limpet — a cap-shaped rock-clamping sea snail.