Tuesday, May 30.
This is your sign to learn more about 🪨 cool rocks 🪨. Become a certified rockhound now.
I have something so important to tell you: Last week my sister and I smashed a bunch of rocks in half. It released something primal within us, and I am compelled to preach the one universal truth I now know; The key to life is to recognize you’re a certified Rockhound. A Granite Groupie. A real Basalt Head.
Some rocks are almost made for throwing. A life like yours demands more exploring. Go on, my little #rockhound. Find a rock to smash open. The best part about your new hobby? In the absolute worst-case scenario, the rock is simply filled with more rock. What a beautiful thing.
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there are no rules to what's a trinket. you find something and it's pretty/meaningful to you then damn, that's a pretty good trinket.
however, trinkets must never be stolen. always make sure you are only in possession of ethically sourced trinkets.
here are some of my trinkets.
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I found a nice hunk of shiny rock in the woods (much more reflective and shiny in person than in any photo I took). The rock ID app says it's most likely schist.
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The "crystals and minerals are cool but they do not have 'healing auras' or any of that nonsense" post that @a-dinosaur-a-day reblogged got me thinking about my own rock collection.
I've been collecting rocks almost my whole life, but during middle school I got REALLY into geology and rockhounding.
Edit: here’s my rock collection
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Do you collect beautiful rocks? For garden decoration, maybe.
I do! I use them to decorate the pots on my balcony, so only small rocks for now. When I have my own land, then I will collect rocks all sizes. Most rocks that I like are found in the river, forest and digging in my garden!
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I got a Geiger counter!
Let’s look through my collection for some Spicy Rocks! I’ve never deliberately collected radioactive specimens, so I have no idea what I’m going to find.
First, though, let’s test the baseline level of radiation in my house.
It’s fun to hear the Geiger counter click as it detects radiation. 20 counts per minute. Nice! You’re unlikely to ever see a count of zero, as pretty much everything in the world, including the human body, gives off a little bit of radiation.
20 is a normal baseline, nothing to be concerned about. Standing in my house, I’m getting a radiation dose of about 0.00013 milliseieverts per hour - or a little over one mSv a year. This is an average yearly dosage of radiation for people in my country, and is something my body can easily process. For context, a dosage of 100 mSv would slightly increase my risk of cancer, and a dosage of 1000 mSv would immediately give me radiation sickness.
But enough about these boring, safe amounts of radiation. I want to see some spice! Let’s check over by the Rock Wall!
Hm, I’d expected the CPM to be noticeably higher around my rock collection, but I’m getting nothing! Even testing each individual rock, nothing’s more than a few ticks above the baseline. So far, my fancy new toy is looking like wasted money. :c
WAIT! THERE!! 62 CPM! That’s three times higher than the base reading in the rest of my house!!! YESSS!! THIS ROCK IS SPICY!!!!
Here’s the rock that’s setting off my Geiger counter. (Yes I’m touching the spicy rock with my bare hands, don’t worry about it.)
This fossil, which is as big as my head, is part of the femur bone of a Megalonyx, a North American giant ground sloth!
These huge animals could grow as big as ten feet tall. They lived alongside humans during the last ice age, and it’s theorized that humans may have hunted them to extinction. This particular fossil was found in a phosphate mine!
Why is it radioactive? Because... sometimes fossils are just radioactive! They spend a lot of time in the ground, which is full of radioactive minerals, and often radiation just gets all up in there. There are some fossils on display in museums which are so radioactive that they have to be coated with lead paint for the safety of curators and museum-goers! Compared to those, this femur bone is barely radioactive at all.
So is it really safe for me to have this in my house, much less handle it with my bare hands? Well, yeah! Remember, despite having this spicy rock in my collection, the radiation baseline in my house is completely normal. Here’s why.
Even just a few centimeters away from this specimen, the Geiger counter’s reading is halved. A few inches away, and it can’t detect any radiation at all. It basically has to be directly touching the rock to get an abnormal reading. Which means I also have to be touching the rock to receive a meaningful amount of radiation exposure.
But even holding this rock in my hands, I’m only getting a dosage of about 0.0004 mSv per hour. If I never let go of this rock for an entire year, I would get a dose of about 3.5 mSv. Which is... still completely within the safe threshold for my body to process. Nothing to worry about!
Man, I gotta start collecting some spicier rocks.
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I finally got around to getting some nice strong superglue so my new hobby is gluing together rocks that I previously broke.
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It’s been a while since I’ve been able to find some cool rocks outside, so I was glad to find these in some local parking lots :)
The first batch is from a grocery store parking lot, the big stripey, layered one it my favourite <3 The second batch is from a rainy day in a thrift store parking lot.
The very last little orangey-brown one is from a neighbour’s driveway. It’s really pretty and translucent, with slight variations of colour when held up to the light, it definitely reminds me of an agate (like the more common ones found in rivers and lakes).
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