Flour Mike thanks for the info, you seem very knowledgeable. All thoughts and comments are helpful so keep them coming. I'm doing research as we text...
Lisa not to sound negative about Your rock,,but i've always heard they are almost inpossible to break a chunk off..just a thought..I still hope its a true meteorite!!
Spur, it depends on the age. Extremely old ones often have most or all of the skin shed. much the same way bedrock, quartz etc deteriorates. They will also convert some of their material to hematite so the scratch test is not valid on very old examples.
This one explains about the nickel content. 4% is borderline and would need the lab test. Usually we would like to see7% or >7% for a positive determination, but the 25 and 30% are rare at the other extreme. The important thing to understand is earth rocks do have some iron nickel metal but we expect that material to be fully oxidized. 2% nickel is what our terrestrial ore runs for good ore. Give this a read as it will help. (It depends on the +/- error of the particular device used.) http://meteorites.wustl.edu/id/metal.htm
I am just gessing here but that rock looks to have a few differnt collors in it, when it comes through the atmospher it would get red hot mabie made an outter crust and a smoth side where it heated up the most. and shouldent it be Black ? Have you looked at it through a loop ?
Flour Mike it does have a 2-4+% Ni content according to a metal analyzer they use at gold and coin shops. I went the first time with a small piece that I had broken off and then a second time with the entire rock and the results were the same...do you still think I need to do a nickel test?
There are about a dozen tests that can be done. Magnets stick to lots of rocks. The first test to do is specific gravity. You can google the procedure. If the specific gravity is high, then you will want to cut a window on the non display side. From this window you will be able to see the exact makeup of the insides and perform the only known true test that can be done outside the lab. That is the high nickle content test. Only rocks from space have a high nickel content. When the earth was molten almost all of our nickel went down into the core. If you test very strong on the swab then getting in line for professional testing is the next step. The premier lab for this runs a take a number system and generally they are about 800+ tests behind. 85% of those tests will be terrestrial stones.
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http://meteorites.wustl.edu/meteorwrongs/meteorwrongs.htmlisa ck out the link i posted it might help you
Flour Mike thanks for the info, you seem very knowledgeable. All thoughts and comments are helpful so keep them coming. I'm doing research as we text...
Lisa not to sound negative about Your rock,,but i've always heard they are almost inpossible to break a chunk off..just a thought..I still hope its a true meteorite!!
Spur, it depends on the age. Extremely old ones often have most or all of the skin shed. much the same way bedrock, quartz etc deteriorates. They will also convert some of their material to hematite so the scratch test is not valid on very old examples.
This one explains about the nickel content. 4% is borderline and would need the lab test. Usually we would like to see7% or >7% for a positive determination, but the 25 and 30% are rare at the other extreme. The important thing to understand is earth rocks do have some iron nickel metal but we expect that material to be fully oxidized. 2% nickel is what our terrestrial ore runs for good ore. Give this a read as it will help. (It depends on the +/- error of the particular device used.) http://meteorites.wustl.edu/id/metal.htm
I am just gessing here but that rock looks to have a few differnt collors in it, when it comes through the atmospher it would get red hot mabie made an outter crust and a smoth side where it heated up the most. and shouldent it be Black ? Have you looked at it through a loop ?
Flour Mike it does have a 2-4+% Ni content according to a metal analyzer they use at gold and coin shops. I went the first time with a small piece that I had broken off and then a second time with the entire rock and the results were the same...do you still think I need to do a nickel test?
There are about a dozen tests that can be done. Magnets stick to lots of rocks. The first test to do is specific gravity. You can google the procedure. If the specific gravity is high, then you will want to cut a window on the non display side. From this window you will be able to see the exact makeup of the insides and perform the only known true test that can be done outside the lab. That is the high nickle content test. Only rocks from space have a high nickel content. When the earth was molten almost all of our nickel went down into the core. If you test very strong on the swab then getting in line for professional testing is the next step. The premier lab for this runs a take a number system and generally they are about 800+ tests behind. 85% of those tests will be terrestrial stones.