Atacamite Mineral

Hey dear community, first of all I hope that you are all well and you had a great start to the new weekend! In this post, I would like to talk a little about minerals and hope you can gather your new knowledge.

You can see here two specimens of Atacamite, which is a rare mineral and the origin can be traced back to various ways and on the one hand it can be caused by oxidation and on the other by volcanic activity. It is mainly found in the oxidation zone of copper-containing mines and the first specimens probably come from South America where it was found in Chile and it was named at the beginning of the 19th century by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752 - 1840) who played an important role in science and, among other things, he is known as a co-founder of zoology and anthropology. He named Atacamite after the Atacama Desert in the northern part of Chile, which extends over a thousand kilometers on the coast and because of the strong drought it is considered a relatively lifeless place and there the occurrence of Atacamite is even so high that it is interesting for the mining of copper from an economic point of view. An influencing factor for the mostly green color is the content of copper and in this specimen it has an almost black color and another property is the typical shine which also comes into its own here. It was found in several hundred locations and as ore it is only suitable if it is found more often and also in the area of research there are some interesting approaches in which Atacamite is used because of some interesting chemical reactions and otherwise it is particularly popular among collectors.

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.