Wolfram: an Inventive Mineral Name

     As I was doing some research for my post about hubnerite I came across some information about wolfram. Wolfram is not actually a mineral, but rather a name that was once applied to two different minerals when both were thought to be the same (you can read a little more about this in May 19th’s post Hubnerite: Black Beauty) Despite the fact that wolfram is actually two minerals I would still like to write about it today simply because of the origin of its name. In my post about mineral names I told you that a mineral’s name is often just a description of its properties in another language, usually Latin or Greek. This is the case with the word “wolfram,” but the language used to describe its interesting properties is actually German.
     There is a fascinating story behind the name “wolfram.” About five hundred years ago some tin miners in Germany noticed that some of the rocks that they were smelting with the tin ore caused a nasty froth to form on top of the molten metal, which destroyed some of the tin. They named the stone volfram which is composed of the German words volf which means “wolf” and rahm which means “cream” or “froth,” because of the fact that this cream “devoured the tin like a wolf.”
     During the time that I have spent learning about minerals and their names I have seen names translated to mean things like “cross stone,” “golden leek,” and even “the stone that leafs apart,” but I think that “wolf cream” is the most inventive one that I’ve ever seen!
     P.S. tungsten also used to be called wolfram (this likely has something to do with the fact that tungsten is found in the stone) and it is still known by this name in some countries. That is why tungsten is a W on the periodic table.

Hubnerite: Black Beauty

     Hubnerite is a black mineral whose crystals are flat rectangular prisms. Most of the examples that I’ve seen have front and back faces that are nearly perfect squares, but I’ve also seen a few that are more stretched out. Despite the way that I described it above, hubnerite is not always black. Actually pure hubnerite is reddish-brown or red and is translucent or transparent, but iron impurities can cause it to become black and lessen its translucency until it actually becomes opaque. Other impurities can give rise to other colors in hubnerite such as brownish-black, brownish-yellow, and brown. At one time hubnerite and another mineral called ferberite were thought to be the same mineral (this mineral’s name was wolfram.) Eventually scientists realized that the two were not the same mineral, but just very similar. Ferberite is composed of a chemical called iron tungstate and hubnerite is composed of manganese tungstate.
     Hubnerite is used as an ore of the metal tungsten. Tungsten is used to make steel alloys, the filaments in some incandescent light bulbs, and welding electrodes (the acronym TIG in TIG welding stands for “tungsten inert gas.”) Tungsten is also used to make a chemical called tungsten carbide, which is also known as “hardmetal.” True to its name hardmetal is very hard. I have used a knife sharpener that is made of hardmetal and have personally watched it peel stainless steel like a carrot! Hardmetal is also used to make scratch-resistant rings.
     Hubnerite is found in such places as: Peru, Mexico, Romania, Japan, Bolivia, Sweden, South Dakota, Washington state, North Carolina, New Jersey, and much of the Western U.S. Hubnerite has a place on my list of favorite minerals simply because of its unusual color and the fact that it contains tungsten, which few other minerals do!