I recently decided to go on a late night gemstone and rock hunt that I wanted to share with my Steemit followers.
Here is what I found:
Perhaps you have seen “glowing rocks” before, where gemstones and rocks turn vibrant colors under black light. Well, I picked up a powerful black light flashlight on Amazon with the goal of going to the mountains near my house and searching for some glowing rocks – this was my first attempt...
It was a fail!! I could not find any glowing rocks in a couple of hours of searching. I only found regular rocks, some of which were kind of cool, but all of which are probably worthless.
I have not really seen anybody doing rock hunting with black lights before, so I was not sure what to expect or even if it would work… turns out, there is probably a reason!
I am thinking I was unsuccessful for a few potential reasons. First, the rocks/gemstones might be generally covered in a layer of dirt/grime that prevented the UV rays from absorbing and reflecting back. Second, I might have had the wrong kind of UV black light – I know there are short waves and long waves, and I don’t know which one I have, and I don’t know which one I should have been using.
Oh well, next time I might try wading the river and digging around, though it might be smart to bring someone up there with me if I am hanging out in the river in the middle of the night. I took some pictures the next morning – here are a few of the more interesting rocks.
Here is a close up of a green stone I found which looked pretty nice:
Here is a close up of a rock with copper (I think it is copper) running through it:
Here is a close up of some silver flecks in the granite rocks. There is not much to see in the pictures, but in the sunlight, you can see silver reflecting all over (there are some silver mines in these mountains, though I am not sure this is really silver or just a different rock particle):
These mountains also were a part of the California gold rush, so there are lots of gold panners each weekend up there, though I have not spent much time up there myself. I imagine there might be some glowing rocks up there waiting to be found, but I need to do more research on where to look and make sure I have the right UV black light as well.
I clearly have a lot to learn before rock hounding becomes a new hobby of mine! I do not know what I am going to do with these rocks I did find… I guess they will just become garden ornaments!
Thanks for stopping by!
Brian