What is Garnet?

About Garnet:

• It is rare in beach sand which is destroyed by prolonged exposure to the waves and currents of the ocean. 
• It is a fairly common mineral, deep red in color. It crystallizes at high temperatures, usually where large mountain belts grind upwards out of colliding tectonic plates.
• These are opaque, transparent to translucent minerals that can be found as individual crystals, pebbles, or clumps of inter-grown crystals.
• There are six main types of garnet, all with slightly different chemical compositions. All kinds of garnet can form in the same place and sometimes garnets can be a combination of types e.g. pyrope-almadine or pyrope-spessartine.
• Formation:
  • These are formed in metamorphic (schist, amphibolite, and eclogite) and igneous (some granites and peridotite) rocks.
  • This mineral grows deep in Earth’s crust, in the same kind of conditions in which diamonds are formed.
• When sand contains an abundance of garnets, it usually contains epidote and magnetite as well.
• Australia produces almost half of the world garnets, with the rest mainly coming from India, USA and China.
• Uses: It is used for manufacturing blasting media, abrasives, grinding wheels, mosaic cutting stones, decorative wall plasters, ceramics, polishing of picture tubes, glass polishing and antiskid surface for roads, air strips etc.