This holiday season, why not get a mineral every day instead of chocolate? Today’s mineral is Cinnabar find out more about it below..

It’s Friday the 18th of December – which can mean only one thing….. IT’S CHRISTMAS JUMPER DAY!!!!!!!!! I, as I’m sure you can imagine, own MANY seasonal jumpers, but my favourite one by far is this one:

It’s a DINOSAUR CHRISTMAS JUMPER!

I mean come on! It has ROBOT DINOSAURS on it!!!! But there is one thing that it shares with many other Christmas jumpers – it’s synthetic fabric. But that’s ok, because the mineral we are looking at today is essential for artificial jumpers, and that is Cinnabar. Cinnabar is one of the original sources for the colour vermillion red and is also used in the formation of sodium hydroxide, a material that is used to make synthetic fabric, aka ALL THE CHRISTMAS JUMPERS!! Seriously if you have a Christmas Jumper that isn’t synthetic, please send me a picture – I’m not sure they exist!!!

I mean, no words are needed really. An AMAZING Cinnabar photo by Dominik Schläfli.

Cinnabar:
Chemical formula: HgS
Colour: Red
System: Trigonal
Hardness (Mohs): 2 – 2½
Can you find it in the UK? Yes

Locations for Cinnabar in the UK, as per the MinDat website.

I didn’t realise you can find Cinnabar in the UK, but let’s face it, we have a brilliantly diverse rock and mineral resource in this country so I shouldn’t be surprised (quietly slips off to note these locations down as I love Cinnabar, it’s beautiful and has a fun name that sounds like it should be a biscuit).

For more information about Cinnabar please visit the MinDat website.