Science with Amber

 

Spider in Amber shamelessly linked from here.

My interest in geology started with my Grandfather who still travels to Andamooka to mine opals. He used to go once a year and it was his private time away from his (in my opinion) huge family (5 kids + some ring-ins at times). When I was a child he would occasionally craft jewellery for us from opals or other crystalls that caught his attention. After many years of dabbling at University I finally found the geology department and started my own research. Once facet of this was to research how opals were formed so I could help him (theoretically) stake out his new patch each year.

During this time, he also taught me the basics of silver smithing. This combined with my interest in medieval things led me to play with amber. I recall one of my first attempts went horribly wrong. I had epoxied my cut and polished amber into a setting and chipped the stone while I was tightening the claws. So I thought I'd just dunk it in nail polish remover (like I did opals) to soften the epoxy and recut the stone. (clearly I wasn't thinking). The amber, being a resin, also went soft and squishy. Oops! I have toyed with the idea of seeing if I can soften amber, push inclusions like bugs into it (or squish two pieces together) and then re-harden them but I haven't gotten to that experiment yet.

 One of the experimental amber samples

In summary - I like amber, I like science and the following paper combines the two and may even help me in future purchases. Experimental studies on the heat treatment of Baltic amber. Yamei Wang, Mingxing Yang, and Yiping Yang. Gems & Gemology, Summer 2014, Vol. 50, No. 2