7 Weird Facts About Crystals and Stones

With more stones and crystals than you can count, it’s no wonder you don’t know everything there is to know about them off the top of your head.

Sometimes, however, the hidden facts about crystals and stones can surprise us.

Have you ever found yourself wondering what the most expensive diamond you can buy is, what alternative practices use crystals and stones, or if a living creature can naturally make a crystal?

Then we have the perfect list for you! We’ve come up with the seven weirdest facts about crystals and stones.

Be warned – these might blow your mind.

1. Healing Crystals and Stones

Crystals such as amethyst, citrine, and quartz are often utilized as healing tools.

What are healing crystals?

Healing crystals are various crystals and stones believed to have a calming, soothing, healing, or spiritual effect on the human body and spirit. Each crystal has different properties.

For example, amethyst may help with hangovers, calm the mind, and enable you to connect with your spirituality.

Topaz as a healing crystal can stabilize emotions, aid digestion, stimulate the metabolism, and more. Even more interesting is the fact that the healing properties of topaz change depending on its color too.

Citrines may be able to cleanse your spirit and rejuvenate it after exposure to toxic or negative environments.

2. Red Diamonds

While we all might be familiar with clear and colored diamonds, what most of us don’t know is that red diamonds are the most expensive ones on the market.

Why so expensive?

The expense comes from the fact that it’s incredibly hard to find red diamonds in the first place. To be precise, of all the diamonds mined each year, only 0.0001% of those are colored.

One of the reasons red diamonds are rare is because they’re a result of impurities within the atomic structure.

In fact, there are only 30 true red diamonds in the world at the moment, and most of those are less than a carat.

3. Diamonds

Every year, over 130 million carats of diamonds get mined. However, diamonds are not the rarest crystals. The award for rarest crystals goes to crystals such as painite and alexandrite.

Don’t let this fool you – diamonds are still one of the most coveted gems. In fact, the ancient Greeks and Romans believed diamonds to be the tears of Gods and pieces of stars.

But don’t let divinity stop you from buying diamond rings like joyerias Madrid for your significant other!

4. Snow Is a Crystal

Snow is a crystal. Yes, we’re being serious. When we talk about snow, we’re talking about the individual snowflakes that form the substance we fondly call snow.

Did you know that snowflakes are also known as snow crystals?

Snow crystals are crystallized water, and just about anything can be crystallized, like your DNA.

As long as a solid material’s atoms form a highly-ordered, compact structure (known as a crystal lattice and generally geometric in design), it can be classified as a crystal.

Also, not only are snow crystals a product of nature, scientists have figured out how to manufacture their own snow crystals in laboratories and have noticed that temperature and humidity have an effect on the crystal’s design.

5. The Piezoelectric Effect

The piezoelectric effect is a natural phenomenon that occurs when crystals such as quartz or topaz generate an electric charge after stress is applied to them.

In other words, you can squeeze a quartz or topaz crystal, and it will generate electricity.

Another fun fact about the piezoelectric effect is that it can also happen in reverse. When electricity is applied to a quartz or topaz, the crystal will squeeze or shift on its own.

Maybe you can figure out a way to turn your quartz crystal into a phone charger?

After all, clocks and watches using quartz to tell time do exist!

6. Cueva De Los Cristales

The Cueva de Los Cristales (which translates to the Cave of Crystals) houses something very special – the world’s largest selenite crystals. The large selenite crystals aren’t just the largest of their kind; they’re the largest known crystals in existence.

Many of the large crystals are about 30 ft. long and over 3 ft. wide and were discovered in the year 2000 while new mining tunnels were being excavated.

What’s even more interesting is that selenite is another name for elongated crystals of gypsum, which is an ingredient in drywall.

That’s right – your house shares a little bit in common with the largest crystals in the world. However, don’t get too excited thinking you might have crystals from Cueva de Los Cristales in your house. The selenite crystals in the cave are under protection and aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

7. Living Creatures

Our seventh weird fact about crystals and stones is that living organisms naturally form some crystals.

Take aragonite – most mollusks and corals naturally produce aragonite as a shell or endoskeleton. In other words, these creatures evolved the ability to produce a crystal to act as protection against predators. Crazy, right?

Now, whenever you go to an aquarium you can think about how the mollusks and corals are constantly blinged out with jewelry.

Not so crazy is the fact that aragonite can also form in oceans and caves after being subjected to high amounts of pressure.

Of course, let’s not forget that aragonite is also used as a healing crystal believed to be able to help you focus and meditate.

Weird, Right?

It’s amazing how many weird and interesting facts you can learn about seemingly ordinary rocks, but crystals and stones are far more interesting then we give them credit for.

Not only are crystals believed to be a method for healing, but some are produced from living organisms!

If you enjoyed learning weird facts about crystals and stones, then we think you should check out the rest of our weird news.

You never know what else you might find out!

Weirdomatic is the place where all weird things come to life through the amazing world of photographs – a corner of our wild imagination or the whimsical face of the reality?