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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I can imagine this 'gem'--solid, highly polished, valuable. Would such coal be similar in appearance to that beautiful black volcanic rock?
no, coal is much shiner than obsidian.. there is a diner just off the highway in scanton (PA) that has beautiful object carved from lumps of anthracite coal.
i remember being excited when the coal truck came round to our apartment building-- the big truck would back up onto the sidewalk, and a ton of coal would go down the shute to the coal bin in the building basement.
we kids would reach out and try to grab lumps. the building used smallish lumps -- (they made 'black chalk' for white concrete walks) the coal would glitter in the sunlight. Coal is very pretty.
(spoken like a person who has never had to mine coal, or shovel coal or shovel coal ashes).
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Thanks again, of troy, for the explanation there.
Actually, when you think about it, it does make sense that something as hard as anthracite would/could glitter very much since diamonds do glitter with unmatched refulgence. Which makes me wonder, is the glittering of the diamond unmatched? And what would be the term to describe 'glittering'? We have the mohs scale and the Richter scale and all other kinds of scales, but do we have a glittering scale?
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Dear WW: I think it likely crystalline structure is basis
or reflectiveness. I have read that diamonds are formed
deep in volcanoes at tremendous temperature and pressure.
Industrial diamonds are now made synthetically, but I don't know if the synthetic ones can yet compete pricewise.
And remember, the cars of today run ten times as far as the
cars of the thirties, because the parts can now be machined
to tolerances not possible in the thirties, using diamond abrasives.
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
using diamond abrasives.
Well, what do diamond abrasives have to do with it? I know diamonds are of the hardest of substances and can make a scratch on nearly anything, but what would this trait have to do with manufacturing cars?
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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With the best machine tools that could be made in the early thirties, pistons in cylinders, for example fitted poorly enough that the car had to be "broken in", meaning rough places on both surfaces had to wear down the high spots.
You weren't supposed to drive over thirty miles an hour until you had driven 500 miles, and oil including filter had to be changed at 1,000 miles. My father always traded his car in at 35K miles. I'll bet the buyer didn't get more
than 20K, and had lots of little problems.
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journeyman
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journeyman
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Coal is very pretty.
Yes, it is. Unfortunately, when most of us encounter coal the pieces are worn and dusty, and make a mess of anything they touch. But if you split a lump of coal the fracture surface will be smooth and shiny, and it's hard enough that it does not leave dust on the fingertip when rubbed. I have a very attractive piece of Colombian coal on my desk at work, and two pieces here at home that I "extracted" myself from a disused coal mine in Spitzbergen!
"Anthrax" (coal) and "anthros" (a flower) look very similar, but I don't know if there's any connection.
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journeyman
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journeyman
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Industrial diamonds are now made synthetically, but I don't know if the synthetic ones can yet compete pricewise.
They certainly can compete pricewise. It is on quality that they may fall short (although the gap is not large).
The biggest threat to the price of diamonds is not the improvement in synthetic ones, but the sheer abundance of natural ones. deBeers has been fighting a rearguard action for years, maintaining an artificial scarcity by buying up most of the world's diamond prduction every year. But their position is increasingly unsustainable.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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i taken tour tours of coal mines (in Pennsylvania) and i too have lumps of coal (among my other rocks).
In the slag heaps left by by mines (shale) i've gone fossil hunting.. mostly leaves and ferns.. the biggest is about 2 and half inches (3 c. or so)
i've also gone up to the dolimite cliffs in Herckser NY to collect Herchser 'diamonds' (that wrong.. is Her... there is a whole county in NY with the name.. sorry but i am having a long senior moment)
in anycase the diamonds are actually free, double ended, quartz crystals that are not bound into a matrix. (the way they are in geodes)
PS--what about the name coleen...(is it a real irish name or a pet name that has come to be a name)
i have been told its a pet name, using col as in collier/ with een (a common irish diminutive) .. what do you know about it hibernicus?
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veteran
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"Anthrax" (coal) and "anthros" (a flower) look very similar, but I don't know if there's any connection.
It's anthos for flower, Hib., as in anthology (whose Latin calque is florilegium). According to Pokorny, it's from the PIE root *andh- 'to stand out, jut out; to flower, bloom'. You might have been thinking of Greek antheros 'blooming' which is from the same root, which also gives Middle Irish ainder, aindir 'young woman', Welsh anner 'young cow', Old Welsh enderic 'vitulus, veal', Welsh enderig 'bull, ox, bullock', Breton ounner 'young cow'. Cool, but supposedly not related to anthraks.
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veteran
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veteran
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what about the name coleen
It's from the Irish word for girl: cailín, diminutive of caile 'girl'. You're right, the -ín is a dim. suffix, related to the -en in -chen, the -ein in -lein, and the -in- in zucchini literally 'little sweet things'. The col in collier is from the English coal.
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