#spherulites

My current complete collection of ocean Jasper spheres. It's an addiction. I've shared pictures of these before, minus my newest one which is the big one at the far, middle right. They also all have names!

1. Sanguinolentum: Containing, or tinged with blood, bloody.

2. Tulipa: Plant, Tulip. The colours and patterns reminded me of a flower field.

3. Xerces Sylvester Cosmos: This one is super random. My parents and I each gave this one a name. I said Xerces because it reminded me of the extinct, blue, San Francisco Lycaenid butterfly, my dad said Sylvester because he's random, lmao, and my mom said Cosmos because it seemed I had searched the entire cosmos for it.

4. Fuligo: The yellow blob reminded me of yellow slime mold.

5. Cirrocumulus: Named as such because the light blue orbs are reminiscent of clouds.

6. Nix: Meaning "snow" in Latin. The large, white orbs give an appearance of large fluffy snowflakes.

7. Sakura: The numerous, small, pink orbs give off cherry tree vibes. As if it were covered in tiny, pink blossom petals.

8. Penicillium: An iconic fungi. The colour and pattern resembles mold in a petri dish.

9. Favus: Meaning "honeycomb" in Latin.

10. Occasus Solis or "Occasus" for short: Latin for "setting sun".

11. Ignis: Latin for "fire".

Lava Creek Tuff: Yellowstone National Park

Densely welded silicic tuff from the 1,000 km3 eruption of Yellowstone Supervolcano at 640 (+/-) ka. The source rock that supplied these thin sections is a porphyritic rhyolite obsidian with marked perlite texture, a pattern of cracks that occurs from the expansion of hydrated volcanic glass. The spherulites (round things) shown here are post-depositional features that indicate high gas levels in the source magma. The spherulites exhibit encapsulated quartz and feldspar grains at the center, which is a common trait of the devitrification feature.

BTW, here is a picture of what happened when I super-cooled melted polyethylene oxide with liquid nitrogen.  The bigger the difference in temperature between the melting temperature and the crystallization temperature, the smaller the particle sizes in the microstructure of your finished product.  In plastics they’re called spherulites and in metals grains.