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

We are getting towards the end of the Mineral Advent Calendar now so your final preparations for a couple of days filled with family, friends and celebrating must be nearly done. Today is the Winter Solstice, so if you have been celebrating already then Happy Midwinter!! There are many things that you can use to celebrate the time of year, but one of my favourites is crackers, and crackers depend on one thing to make them go bang!

Do you have your crackers yet?

And that one thing is silver fulminate. It’s the chemical used on the strips of crackers that makes them pop as you pull them apart, a delightful mini-firework for your kitchen table! In order to get silver you mine it directly (as in Day 11) or you can mine something with a lot of silver in it, and that is our mineral today – Galena!

A lovely big lump of Galena from Dakotamatrix.com. But the best identifying feature of Galena is it’s density – it’s unusally dense!

Galena:
Chemical formula: PbS
Colour: Lead-grey
System: Isometric
Hardness (Mohs): 2½
Can you find it in the UK? Yes

Ok I’m starting to think this is my computer now, so as soon as I can get a version of the map to work I will upload it, but needless to say you can find Galena in the UK, to find out where check the locations list on the MinDat website.

For more information about Galena please visit the MinDat website.