Hey dear Hive community, at the beginning I would like to welcome you all to my new post and hope you had a day full of positive experiences! In this post, I liked to talk about minerals and hope you can learn new things.
You can see here a specimen of the mineral nickeline or niccolite which is a relatively rare mineral and it was already known in ancient times and in the past there was an interesting legend and refers to that niccolite is supposed to be reminiscent of an ore from which copper could be obtained, but in reality does not contain copper and therefore people thought it was a cursed mineral and was often referred to as the devil's copper. From a mythological point of view, it was thought that it was enchanted by demons who would live in the mountains and even before the official naming it appears in old writings under other names and the current name can be traced back to the 19th century to the French mineralogist François Sulpice Beudant (1787 - 1850) who named it after the content of nickel. The origin can be attributed to hydrothermal or magmatic origin and because of the rarity, there are no significant areas of application from an economic point of view and it is particularly sought after in the circles of collectors. Sometimes it is also used as ore for the extraction of nickel, but it is important here that the mineral must occur frequently and should not contain too much arsenic, otherwise the extraction can prove to be more difficult. The color really often looks confusingly similar to copper and has a red or brown appearance and from the chemical composition mainly contains nickel or arsenic and those who should handle the mineral must urgently pay attention to the toxicity and it is particularly dangerous in the form of powder and it is important not to inhale the dust as this can lead to health problems. The toxicity is due to the content of arsenic and collectors should make sure to store it in closed containers and in addition, if there is too long contact with the air, the color can change and take on a gray or black appearance
Thank you for the visit and I hope you could learn something new about minerals! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens.
