Lets Talk About Peacock Ore! Are Those Colors Natural?!

[00:00:00]hi my name is tegan i'm here with jacobs trading if you haven't heard of us before make sure you check out the description below that'll take you to our website for more information today we're going to be talking about peacock or and the wonderful fun that this stone is all right guys so i've laid out a selection here of a bunch of different colors to show you what peacock or looks like it ranges from yellows to greens to purples to blues this one has some nice purple and blue on it this one has more into yellow tones so the coloration can vary a lot between pieces so the first thing we're going to talk about is what is peacock or peacock ore can be made up of a couple different rocks but the main two that it is made up of is boronite and chalcopyrite so chalcopride is this brassy kind of color it's not pyrite it's a slightly different form of it but it tends to be kind of brassy so that's what this one is and boronite tends to be kind of a reddish kind of brown color on the inside so in addition to the color variations that you can get in the stone you can also get various inclusions so inclusions are a different stone that aren't always in there that kind of invade the rock so in this one we have veins of quartz that are through here this white stone this one we actually have a piece of garnet so that's this dark stone right in the middle here and this one on this side this stone actually has an inclusion of pyrite so the reason that you see gold in this one is it's pyrite not the chalcopyrite which are two different stones so the chalcopyrite is the part that oxidizes and in this stone there's pyrite inclusions which aren't oxidizing so the main question we get asked a lot about peacock or is are those colors natural or are they painted yes they are natural they actually occur from an oxidization of the stones so next we're going to talk about how that happens so tarnish is actually an oxidization of the stone so when a stone is broken open like we did with this one this area has now been exposed to oxygen and the copper that is located in the stone will now react and cause the colors the coloration that you see on the stone is actually only atoms thick so when people break open a stone say and they go see look it's not coloration on the inside so it must be fake it's supposed to be that way because it doesn't actually occur until it is exposed to air so the variation in colors that you see are actually caused by the thickness of the tarnish so the thicker the tarnish the more light that is absorbed so which causes the darker colors so essentially a younger tarnish is the yellows and the greens and an older tarnish which is thicker is these blues and purples so what could cause this is maybe when the stone was broken this area was the first part exposed and then this area might be had some dirt on it and it was cleaned later on and as you can see through the video tarnish actually is what is the result of this blackening of my hands so you can see it's black so it's kind of like jewelry as well when you get a silver necklace that tarnishes it's the same process and if you rub a silver necklace it'll do the same thing you can see that it's not the coloration that's coming off on my hand there's no flecks of shiny things that are appearing but it's actually this black color that's occurring which is the tarnish thanks for joining me today and talking about peacock ore if you like what you saw be sure to hit like and subscribe if you have any questions about what we did today feel free to drop it in the comments below and have a great rest of your week