[Rockhounds] "Kraokinite" - 2 words explosively mixed together(?)

[Alan Goldstein]

Sounds like a mixture of "Krakatoa" and "Kaolinite!"

I've heard of the fine rock dust (powder) associated with mountain glaciers 
as "mountain flour." I think the Troost collection has a jar of that stuff 
from the Alps.
Alan

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <pmodreski at aol.com>
To: <rockhounds at lists.drizzle.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 5:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Rockhounds] "Kraokinite"


I wanted to share this exchange of notes Carol Bova and I had about the 
"kraokinite"; what I looked up makes me think it probably does refer to 
kaolinite in snowflakes. You'll find that the old (1884) article Carol sent 
the link to, right below, is quite interesting:



"Take a look at this... could it be this pumice from Krakatoa that was found 
in snowflakes?



http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-049X%28189401%2932%3A143%3C343%3ADFTKEO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage


What you say is quite possible, Carol. That was a real interesting excerpt 
from the Krakatoa article, thanks for sending that link.

Of course, the big eruption of Krakatoa was in 1883, so only snowflakes from 
that year or thereabouts would contain such nuclei.

But I easily found via google, references to study of dust particle nuclei 
within snowflakes. Here's one good scientific article about this,


Mineral Dust Aerosols as Ice Forming Nuclei
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/archives/projects/gccs/2001/student_work/nathan.pdf
in which one reads,



"...mineral dust particles are often collected from the centers of 
snowflakes.

Kaolinite especially has been identified by electron microscopy with sizes 
ranging from

0.1 to 4 μm in snowflake centers (Rogers and Yau, 1989)."

μm in snowflake centers (Rogers and Yau, 1989)."

I think this is the kind of thing that the person may have been referring to 
when they wrote that label for Georgia, and "kraokinite" just ended up that 
way as a misspelled or misread version of kaolinite.

Pete




-----Original Message-----
From: Al Balmer <albalmer at att.net>
To: Rockhounds at drizzle.com: A mailing list for rock and gem collectors 
<rockhounds at lists.drizzle.com>
Sent: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 2:16 pm
Subject: Re: [Rockhounds] "Kraokinite"

On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:26:31 -0400, "Jeffrey T. Cessna"
<jcessna at nist.gov> wrote:

>My guess is that Georgia is trying to write a newsletter summary for
>a club meeting she could not attend based on notes taken by someone
>who was not the club secretary. The secretary was running the
>meeting, but was also the rockhound who mentioned the confusing
>mineral name (at the meeting).
>
>The rockhound was visiting a glacier in or near Banff National Park
>(in Canada) and wanted to collect some glacier tumbled rocks. The
>explanation for not finding any was that they were at such a high
>altitude that the only thing coming out of the glacier was
>"kraokinite." Which was reported to be a fine dust that serves as the
>nucleation point in the formation of snowflakes.

Very good! <G> Your hypothesis seems to fit all the known facts, at
least.
>
>This suggests that the earlier answer of kaolinite might be the
>correct name. Searching with that spelling produces much more information.
>
Yes. I tried answers.com, since they apparently use a soundex
algorithm to suggest alternate spellings, but the closest suggestion
was "granite."

>...or it could be a completely unrelated question.
>
>-Jeff Cessna
>



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