|
 Sapphire or its mineralogical name CORUNDUM is a well known gemstone. It's an aluminum oxide with traces of coloring elements. Sapphires can be of all possible colors, including pink, and can also be colorless; partly colored sapphires are quite common. There are also natural sapphires which change color: they are purple in daylight and red in electric light.
Sapphires are very hard and can be worn in any form of jewelry and have long been popular as ring stones. Because of their high density they are usually smaller than most other gemstones of the same weight. They vary in transparency from complete clarity, through various degrees of cloudiness to sub-translucency, but some slight inclusions are not necessarily regarded as defect. The shimmering whitish sheen produced by microscopic needles of rutile and known as 'silk' is accepted as an attractive attribute within reason and as a proof that a stone is genuine.
|