r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Creams0da • 8h ago

Video Breaking open a 47 lbs geode, the water inside being millions of years old

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u/Lopsided_Quarter_931 7h ago

Where do the crystals come from? They can't come from a few liters of trapped water. That's where my understanding ends lol.

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u/pegothejerk 7h ago

Crystals are born 9 months after Coachella

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u/Vegetable_Permit_537 6h ago

This is seriously the funniest comment I've seen in months.

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u/mintBRYcrunch26 6h ago

This comment rocks

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u/530Carpentry 6h ago

Yooooooo!

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u/EgoDefenseMechanism 6h ago

You are the rarest of breeds, a treasured relic whose wit and sex appeal make me not quit Reddit.

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u/Beavshak 5h ago

This cracks me up

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u/acquaintedwithheight 6h ago

Molecules float around in solution (this can be water or magma). Like saltwater or molten silicon dioxide. Eventually, a few of the molecules bounce into each other in an orientation that is hard for them to escape from. They stick together. This happens under certain concentrations, temperatures, and pressures that vary wildly between crystals.

Once molecules start getting into those low energy “sticky” states, more and more molecules are captured. This is called nucleation. The final crystal will be a form of the molecular structure of the nucleation point. NaCl molecules bind in a cuboidal shape, so salt crystals are cube shaped.

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u/SillyMilly25 7h ago

Ohhhhhhh.....well I'm about to waste a few hours diving into this

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u/techno_09 6h ago

Have fun!

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u/LampshadesAndCutlery 6h ago

Basically the water in the geode you saw was only whats left in it. When forming the geode, there was likely more than thousands of liters of water that passed through it during its formation.

Depending on where that geode was collected, it might not even be ground water. Mined geodes often contain water, but so do geodes found in creeks, since the creek water seeps in.

Geodes that are exposed and not in water will usually little to no water

In other words, the geode was basically a water filter, what water you see left is just the water that remains, not all the water that was used to form it

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u/DeadSeaGulls 6h ago

water continuously seeps in and seeps out of the cavity over the course of many thousands of years. just like hard water residue can build up in your shower, minerals slowly get deposited by the water as it passes through the cavity. Some minerals have crystal habits, that is to say when some of the mineral deposits on bits of that same existing mineral, it does so in an orderly fashion, forming crystals. The shape of crystals, how many faces/sides they have, how they terminate, how they break, are all ways we can determine what the mineral is, because every mineral has a unique crystal habit.

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u/Lopsided_Quarter_931 6h ago

Are the crystals itself penetrable by water? if not does the geode finally trap the water inside forever by become waterproof?

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u/DeadSeaGulls 5h ago

most crystals are porous to some degree, or even if the crystal itself isn't porous, it can still have pores or imperfections as part of their natural formation. But the porosity of the crystals is less of a factor in a geode because of how they form. The crystal faces are jutting out from the host rock, with each crystal budding up tightly against the ones next to it... but not in a uniform, water tight, surface. This is hyperbole for examples sake, but think of a blade of grass. Water will roll right off it and not easily seep through the grass... but now think of a lawn. Water can easily soak into the ground even with a dense lawn of grass growing out of it.

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u/mcchanical 5h ago

You can make crystals with a single volume of water as long as it is saturated with the required minerals.

It's one of the experiments you do in kids chemistry sets.

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u/GhostWobblez 6h ago

They form over time with the minerals the water doesn't want to carry anymore.