Strontianite
Strontium carbonate, named after the Scottish village it was found in — and the reason a firework burns red.
Strontianite is strontium carbonate, and it carries one of the few mineral names taken from a specific village — Strontian in the Scottish Highlands, where it was identified in the 1790s and where the element was subsequently found and named after it.
Its familiar consequence is colour. Strontium salts burn an intense crimson, and that is the red in fireworks, distress flares and signal lights. No other element gives quite that red cheaply, which is why a nineteenth-century discovery in a lead mine is still visible on every bonfire night.
How to identify it
Colourless to pale green or yellow, vitreous, and effervescing in acid like any carbonate. It is very close to aragonite in structure and habit, and the reliable distinction is the flame: strontianite colours a flame crimson where aragonite gives the orange of calcium.
How we know: checked recently · only one source, so there is nothing to cross-check it against · stated directly by the source.
How this connects
Where a connection has been confirmed by an outside reference, that reference is named beside it.
is an ore of
- Strontium — element · a source, though celestine supplies more of it Wikidata
is commonly confused with
- Aragonite — mineral · near-identical structure and habit; the distinction is the flame, crimson against calcium's orange
is a component of
- Limestone — rock · in nodules and cavities, strontium substituting for calcium and then separating out — the mineral's commonest sedimentary occurrence
Sources
- Material WorldOur own writing
- Wikimedia Foundation · Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication)
- COD Advisory Board / Vilnius University · CC0 — contributors place data in the public domain