Silver sheen obsidian 4 - a photo on Flickriver

Silver sheen obsidian 4

            (crack surface)
-----------------------------------
Obsidian is a glassy-textured, extrusive igneous rock.  Obsidian is natural glass - it lacks crystals, and therefore lacks minerals.  Obsidian is typically black in color, but most obsidians have a felsic to intermediate chemistry.  Felsic igneous rocks are generally light-colored, so a felsic obsidian seems a paradox.  Mafic obsidians are scarce, but they are also black and glassy.
 
Obsidian is an uncommon rock, but can be examined at several famous localities in America, such as Obsidian Cliff at the Yellowstone Hotspot (northwestern Wyoming, USA) and Big Obsidian Flow at the Newberry Volcano (central Oregon, USA).
 
Obsidian is moderately hard and has a conchoidal fracture (smooth and curved fracture surface), with sharp broken edges.  Freshly-broken obsidian has the sharpest edges of any material known, natural or man-made (as seen under a scanning electron microscope).
  
Obsidian forms two ways: 1) very rapid cooling of lava, which prevents the formation of crystals; 2) cooling of high-viscosity lava, which prevents easy movement of atoms to form crystals.  An example of obsidian that formed the first way is along the margins of basaltic lava flows at Kilaeua Volcano (Hawaii Hotspot, central Pacific Ocean).  Most obsidian formed the second way.

Seen here is silver-sheen obsidian, an unusual variety.

Locality: unrecorded / undisclosed (but possibly from Mexico)

Some rights reserved

Taken on: September 20, 2024

Tags:

silver

sheen

Mexico

glassy

texture

textured

igneous

rock

rocks

glass

lava

volcanic « less

Sets appears in: • Obsidian & Vitrophyre

Stats: 117 views

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder