The Spodumene Experiment: Day 3

I left the spodumene in indirect sunlight for 6 more hours and 2 more hours in direct sun, here are the results today:





The pink / lavender color is definitely intensifying. Excellent.

- YvW

The Spodumene Experiment

I recently acquired a batch of green Afghan spodumene via Bangkok. After a few days I noticed it had started fading in color, which suggests it was likely irradiated to reach the color. So I decided to run this experiment to see how fast the color would change under exposure from sunlight.

Specimen started out a bit richer than this:

After an hour under the Texas sun, you can see the green is fading to clear:

The following day, after a few hours of indirect sunlight (my current location only gets about 2 hours of good sun):

After 3 more hours of indirect sun, I started noticing some pink an purple:

After another hour of direct sun, its definitely taking on some purple/pink.

After another hour of sun (roughly 4 hours total sunlight, 6 hours indirect):

We shall see how purple I can get this crystal just via sunlight. Here's a view down the C-Axis.

Spodumene is fun stuff!

-YvW