1.25" Polished Candy Agate - Malawi

This is a polished section of an agate nodule collected from Malawi. The "face" of this specimen has been polished while the opposite end has been left rough. The specimen features white, blue, and orange bands that are delightfully beautiful. These chalcedony veins are formed by hydrothermal deposition within large cracks in rock. This specimen exhibits the wegeler effect.

It comes with an acrylic display stand.

About Agate

Agate is a variety of microcrystalline quartz (chalcedony) that displays translucence and, in some cases, banding. Agate primarily forms when silica-rich fluids fill pockets within rocks and/or fossils, depositing the silica along the walls of the rock. This process can result in banding patterns, as the compositions and impurities of these depositing fluids change over time. These banding patterns can either form as flat layers, creating linear patterns known as waterline agate, or as rounded layers, forming more common ring-like patterns. These patterns depend on the surfaces available for deposition.

The Wegeler effect, also known as the shadow effect or parallax effect, is a three-dimensional oddity in which rotating a banded agate creates the illusion that those banding lines move. One line will move with the source of light while the other moves with your point of view. This occurs in agate that has tightly packed, alternating bright opaque bands and transparent bands.

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