The terminology “Serpentine” is a rock, made of the minerals serpentinite, and it is a clue that you are looking very clearly at rocks that have been beneath the earth. Serpentine is found when ultramafic rocks come closer to the surface of the earth and undertake to react with water. It is composed of so many serpentine group minerals. This rock is a group of minerals that are usually green in colour.
Properties of Serpentine Mineral
The most self-evident physical properties of serpentine are its green colour, pattern as well as texture appearance, these remind notice of snake skin and that the mineral’s name is “serpentine”. Besides, there are the following other properties:
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Serpentine is a type of metamorphic rock. And the parent rock of this mineral is “Peridotite”.
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The main chemical classification of this mineral: Silicate(SiO4).
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The streak of the serpentine minerals is white in colour.
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This rock has the ability to resist the transfer of heating. That makes the minerals a valuable insulated material and many insulators are made up of serpentine minerals.
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Luster is greasy or waxy.
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The term “Diaphaneity” of the minerals are translucent to opaque and rarely transparent, diaphaneity of the mineral means the ability of that mineral to transmit the light.
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Cleavage of the serpentine mineral are very poor to perfect, cleavage means the way some minerals break along certain lines of weakness in their structure as well as shape, it described in terms of their quality, how easily the mineral breaks and their difficulty- how easy or how hard.
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One of the most important tests of the minerals to identify how the hardness of the mineral is measured by the Mohs scale, is the qualitative ordinal scale, from 1 to 10, mainly to check the scratch resistance of minerals.
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The hardness of the rock varies between 3 and 6.
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The chemical composition of the serpentine is (Mg, Fe, Ni, Al, Zn, Mn)2-3 (Si, Al, Fe)2O5(OH)4.
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Most of these mineral crystal systems are monoclinic.
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The various uses of those minerals are sculpture, ornaments, gems, astrological gemstone, architectural stone and asbestos because this mineral contains chrysotile.
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The presence of chrysolite in any minerals behaves like an insulator and also uses as an insulator material.
Varieties of Serpentine Subgroup
There is a various subgroup of serpentine, the most frequent species are all magnesium(Mg) dominant like chrysotile, lizardite and antigorite. Kaolinite Serpentine group is one of the subgroups of the serpentine mineral, with divalent cations usually trioctahedral coordinated sites.
The chemical properties of the serpentine subgroup are D3[Si2O5](OH)4 D = Mg, Fe, Ni, Mn, Al, Zn. Apart from that so many other subgroups exist in a serpentine-like batiste, marmolite, metaxite, ni-serpentine, nickeliferous serpentine, pelhamine, picrolite, radiotine, retinalite, ricolite, serpentinas best and serpentine subgroup jade (mixture of the serpentine mineral group mainly chrysotile, lizardite serpentine, healerite serpentine and antigorite, it also contains minor impurities such as chlorite, magnetite, ilmenite and talc).
Life With Serpentine Stone
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The serpentine mineral is very affected to our day to day life, it is a very essential thing in looking at the way of humanity.
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It is also a very expensive stone as a view of the astrological stone.
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It is found very rarely in a situation otherwise it isn’t found.
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The major sources of the serpentine mineral are in China, Afghanistan, New Zealand, USA, South Africa, and England.
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The most common form of the serpentine is a green Cabochon gemstone. This is the very small amount of pure fine green serpentine that has very closeness to “jade”.
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The name of gemstone from the serpentine minerals is “New Jade”.