What are the properties of jade?

Question

Im working on a project and i need to know some properties of the jade stone.

is it durable???

heat sensitive?

anything unquie about it?

Answer 1

The definition "jade" is used to define two minerals of similar appearance but different chemical composition: nephrite, a calcium- magnesium silicate, and jadeite, a silicate of sodium and aluminum.

Both minerals are found in a wide range of shades of green, brown, yellow, grey and pink and may be either translucent or opaque. They may be milky or cloudy in appearance and sometimes speckled with tiny black spots.

JADE:

This word is a generic term used to designate a certain number of substances, which, while resembling each other in many characteristics, differ materially in their composition.

These common characteristics are great hardness: wonderful tenacity, a wavy or scaly fracture, a certain oily lustre, and tints of white, greenish-white, milk-white, and rose-white.

The best known variety is brought from China; it is a silicate of lime and magnesia, with traces of oxide of iron, and sometimes of oxide of manganese.

Another variety, greatly prized by the ancients for its miraculous power of curing colics and the bites of venomous insects, is called nephritic jade, or nephrite stone; it is of a pale-green colour, sometimes with a slight tinge of lilac.

Antique objects made of jade are so hard that they can only be cut by the diamond; and as these objects are many of them of considerable dimensions, and their number is too great to suggest such difficult labour, it is supposed that when this jade was taken from the mine it was easily cut, and afterwards attained its hardness by exposure to the air, or perhaps by the direct action of fire.

The jade of Saussure, found in Switzerland, is a species differing somewhat from the Indian jade; and the axe-stone jade is a product of South America. It has been called the amazon stone, and Humboldt says that the Caribbees used the jade stone as amulets, cut in the shape of the Persepolitan cylinders, longitudinally perforated, and covered with inscriptions.

The principal mines of European jade are in Turkey and in Poland, where it is wrought into knife-handles, daggers, &c., and is softer than the oriental jade.

The Chinese are particularly fond of jade, and work it into objects of great beauty. A sceptre of white jade was sent as a present from the Emperor of China to Prince Albert of England.

The most prized of the jades, the so-called "Chinese jade" (jadeite) is emerald green and so beautiful and rare that it has become exorbitantly expensive. In fact, jade is a good investment only if purchased at a reasonable price. A sound policy is never pay more for Chinese jade than you would for an emerald.