talc - soft white talc - hand/display specimen

Description

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Soft white talc from the Acme Mine, Alexander Hills, California - hand/display specimen
Talc's hardness is 1 on the Mohs' scale, and its perfect cleavage in one direction (like mica except more loosely attached) allows tiny flakes of talc to easily slip past each other, giving it a smooth or greasy feel. Talc is usually white, slightly green, gray, brown or colorless. It has multiple industrial uses as an ingredient in paints, insecticides, rubber, paper, plastics, ceramics, roofing and baby powder. By far the greatest amount used in the U.S. is in the manufacture of paper.
The Western Talc Mine - Acme mine was the second largest talc mining operation in the Death Valley region. The southern Death Valley area talc deposits are some of the best examples in the U.S. of talc formed by contact metamorphism. Mining began there around 1910. There are at least 43 talc mines and prospects in the region.
This talc formed when a cherty dolomitic horizon at the bottom of the Crystal Spring Formation was intruded by gabbroic sills in the Mesoproterozoic, roughly one billion years ago. The sills were emplaced before the overlying limey sediments had consolidated and while they were saturated, perhaps by marine water from an overlying sea. Contact metamorphism produced the talc along the contact between the sill and the carbonate metasediments. Two gabbroic sills in the area gave U-Pb radiometric ages of 1087
+
and 1069
+
3 million years.
The Death Valley talc has been used mainly in the manufacture of ceramic wall tiles and as an extender in paints.
This talc is soft and will not withstand student examination unless supervised. We recommend it as a display specimen.
The pencil is 5" long, for scale.
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