PHYSICAL PROPERTIES:
Chemistry: Sb2S3
Composition: Antimony Sulfide
Color: steel gray to silver
Class: Sulfides
Crystal system: orthorhombic; 2/m 2/m 2/m
Crystal habit: bladed or acicular crystals
often
bent or curved due to twinning, also granular
and massive.
Fracture: subconchoidal
Hardness: 2
Specific gravity: 4.6
Luster: metallic
Streak: dark gray
Clevage: perfect in the lengthwise direction
Transparency: opaque
Associated Minerals: quartz, calcite,
gold, arsenopyrite and other sulfides
COMPOSITION:
Suiphide of antimony (71.7% Sb, 28.3% S).
ENVIRONMENT:
In low-temperature veins and rock impregnations. Associated
with arsenic and antimony minerals.
CRYSTAL DESCRIPTION:
Crystals Shaped like Slender Prisms (e.g. tourmaline)
There are often Striated and or
Parallel lines on crystal surface or cleavage faces. Longer crystals
are often curved.The
curving of the long bladed crystals is due to twinning or gliding planes.
Where one twin
plane bends the crystal one direction and another twin plane bends it
in the other direction. This can occur numerous times down the length
of one crystal. Granular crystals in matrix
are also found.
TESTS:
Melts to a liquid, spreads out and completely volatilizes on
charcoal, making a white coating around grain and weakly coloring the
blowpipe flame white. Dissolves in hot concentrated HNO3
and slowly forms a white precipitate on addition of water.
DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS:
Stibnite is a classic mineral species with fine
crystal clusters and long curved crystals. Is
an ore of antimony. Like realgar and orpiment, it is a
late, low-temperature deposit of hot solutions, often associated with
the arsenic minerals and cinnabar. Distinguished
from lead-bearing sulphosalts by the lack of a lead coating (yellow)
on the charcoal and by the complete volatility. Distinguished from bismuthinite
by its lower gravity, its watery fusion on charcoal, and more rapid
volatilization.
LOCALITIES:
In the past the finest ctystals were brilliant
needles over a foot long, from Iyo, Shikoku,
Japan. Next in quality were stubbier, bluntly terminated 1-2 inch crystals
in radiating
clusters from Felsöbanya, Rumania. The best United States crystals have
been found
at Manhattan, Nevada. The Xikuangshan Mine, Lengshuijang, Hunan
Province, Peoples Republic of China. Is producing the wonderfull specimens
comonly seen in today's market. Other locals include Germany;
Brazil; Peru and South Africa.
USES:
An ore of antimony and as mineral specimens. Stibnite
is the main ore of antimony, which
is used by the metallurgical industry to produce alloys.
FACTS & HISTORY:
From the Greek, stimmi or stibi, "antimony," thence to the Latin,
stibium. Also from the Greek anthemon, "flower" in allusion to the form
of crystal druses.
Stibnite is the outstanding example of a mineral with the property
of well-developed gliding planes; so well developed that many of the
crystals found in nature are bent, or soon become bent, without fracturing.
The atoms will glide a definite distance in the basal plane, and then
stop.
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