Amber, the treasure of the Baltic.

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Monday, 07 March 2011 23:13

Amber is one of the most beautiful and magical stones of the earth. The inclusions give a unique look while the different colors allow the user to combine and create beautiful polychromatic sets.

What's the amber? (source: wikipedia)

Amber, tawny or succinic (Latin succinum) is a gem made from fossilized plant resin mainly from the remains of conifers and some angiosperms. Etymologically the name comes from Arabic عنبر, amber, meaning that floats in the sea, floating on sea water, but originally referred to ambergris. Amber is a hard substance, light and crisp.

Is formed by polymerization of residual resin plant some trees dating back at least 300 million years but is not common in the history of the Earth until about 130 million years in the Early Cretaceous. Eventually underwent a process of fossilization forming large irregular masses within the rock strata from the Upper Carboniferous.

Amber is not a mineral because its origin is organic and its structure is amorphous. Its composition varies depending on the tree it came from, though all have terpenes or compounds that are common in hardened resins.

Extraction (source: http://www.elambar.com)

The extraction of amber takes two forms in the open and underground, the mines are difficult to reach places remaining to be exposed to landslides. People are digging up the hill with machetes and sticks with metal tips to make horizontal tunnels to find the carbon layer containing the heart of amber, drill holes where sometimes come crawling or squatting.

Find a piece of amber can take many days of work, the first grams that have the red amber from the fossil shells, amber price is set according to their quality, color, size and fissures.

In Russia, a country where the amber is extracted, there is an industrial factory amber, which is only a small percentage used for jewelry, the rest is for medical and other industries. As for Latvia, Lithuania and Poland the mining and trading of amber is in the hands of autonomous collecting amber on the beaches and make handcrafted jewelry with a negligible production.

The resin to drain from the bark and branches have been trapped air bubbles, water droplets, dust particles, small living things such as plants, insects, worms and other animals being kept and preserved cellular structure and even fragments of their DNA dehydrated fossil inclusions without the shrinkage that typically cause dehydration.

These inclusions in a piece of amber add both beauty and a lot of important information for scientists researching the life for millions of years, so much so that we can reconstruct a model of an ecosystem already long gone. For the assessment of the inclusions the size, type of specimen, visibility, amount and to the position are important factors to it. The age of the amber fossil insects of Mexico and the Baltic is the same age.

Characteristics (source: http://tomasenlinea.com)

Amber has features that make it unique and desirable. Its appearance is usually bright golden yellow when polished. Warm to the touch, being poor thermal conductor, slightly heavier than fresh water floats on salt water from the sea. When heated it softens and then burn, hence its German name "Bernstein", burning stone.

The characteristics of amber due to its organic origin, as is the resin secreted by trees to attract or repel insects and Repair "wounds" Its chemical composition is complex, based on terpenoles, some of which are fossilized over millions of years , being the final product and polymerized oxygenated carbohydrate (such as some plastics).

Colors (source: http://www.arturinsa.com)

The colors of amber are eight: yellow (most common), orange (cognac), red (cherry), white, brown (caramel), bluish green and "black" or moss (dark tones of other colors) that are less frequent that yellow. Of these colors shows a wide range of hues.

Red Amber Chiapas is one of the most beautiful. Blue Amber from the Dominican Republic is the most beautiful existing valued and appreciated.

Sources of text:

http://es.wikipedia.org

http://www.elambar.com

http://tomasenlinea.com

http://www.arturinsa.com

Last Updated on Tuesday, 08 March 2011 12:12