3.8" Sparkling Muscovite Crystals and Fluorite on Feldspar - Namibia

About Fluorite

Fluorite is a halide mineral comprised of calcium and fluorine, CaF2. The word fluorite is from the Latin fluo-, which means "to flow". In 1852 fluorite gave its name to the phenomenon known as fluorescence, or the property of fluorite to glow a different color depending upon the bandwidth of the ultraviolet light it is exposed to. Fluorite occurs commonly in cubic, octahedral, and dodecahedral crystals in many different colors. These colors range from colorless and completely transparent to yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, or black. Purples and greens tend to be the most common colors seen, and colorless, pink, and black are the rarest.

Muscovite is a phyllosilicate mineral of aluminium and potassium. It has a highly perfect basal cleavage, yielding remarkably thin laminæ that are often highly elastic. It can be colorless or tinted through grays, violet, or red, and can be transparent or translucent. Fuchsite and mariposite are green varieties of muscovite, owing their green color to chromium impurities. Alurgite is a manganese-bearing, purple to reddish variety of muscovite.