Allophane

Item Description

It is hard to know what to make of these when you see them for the shapes and ethereal color, but even weirder to describe when you hold them. It feels like you are holding foam, they are so lightweight in the hand. This is a particularly aesthetic example in the size, from small finds of around 2018-or so. For more information on this weird mineral (or mineraloid, as wikipedia says), we refer you to MINDAT, https://www.mindat.org/min-139.html, and Wiki. Mindat says this, which i find hard to wrap my head around: 'The nano-sized particles (a few nm across) have a ball-shaped morphology. Essentially, the mineral consists of a single modified gibbsite sheet rolled into a porous nanoball.'