08-20. Quartz #1.

– Maban in Australian Aboriginal mythology – Quartz is going to be the mineral of week #34. Regardless of its size or shape, its long prism faces always join at a perfect 60° angle. The Ancient Greeks called it kruos, “icy cold” because they believed the mineral to be a form of super cold ice.

Quartz belongs to the trigonal crystal system – triangular in cross section, and its symmetry is P31/21 or P32/21. The largest documented single crystal of quartz was found near the town of Itapore, Brazil. It measured approximately 6.1×1.5×1.5 meters and weighed more than 44 tonnes.

From a resource by R. Wyckoff.