Question:
Pitanje: what type of rock is sapphire?
Answer:
Hi,
Limiting our attention to minerals and rocks only, we can say that sapphire belongs to the corundum class of compounds. When of precious stone quality, sapphire is known to be a very attractive blue gem, but as a rock, it often comes in many colors and can be pretty ordinary and unattractive. To the corundum class, besides sapphire, there belongs the famous ruby jewel. Ruby is always red, while sapphire is corundum of all the other colors, although most frequently it can be found in the various shades of blue. You can find relatively inexpensive rough sapphire "rocks", or if you like, extremely expensive polished and cut gems on the more sophisticated end of the scale. One very important feature of some gem quality sapphires is the formation of star on the stone's surface - the famous star sapphires.
Either way, you will get the same mineral substance, with similar characteristics. This stone is very hard, which is its one very important feature. If there were no diamonds, corundum would be on top of the hardness list. Hardness implies scratch resistance, and durability. This rock can be artificially produced and has it application in some technological areas, and of course, in jewelry production. By its chemical composition, it is an oxide of one very common metal - aluminum, Al. There is no cleavage in this type of rocks, but one can find some rhombic parting in the trigonal crystal system of sapphire.
If you want to know more about the metaphysical properties and meanings of sapphire stones, follow the link given. Hopefully this answers your question, if not, please let me know.
Olga
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