Great South Gems & Minerals

• Iron Pyrite • 

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

• Iron Pyrite • 

Pyrite - Fool's gold - sulfur dioxide

Commonly called "Fool's gold", Pyrite is an iron sulfide. It has a metallic luster and a brass-yellow hue that looks like real gold in small pieces in a gold pan.

Pyrite occurs isometric crystals that usually appear as cubes. Pyrite also frequently occurs as octahedral crystals and as pyritohedra form. Hardness 6 to 5-1/2. Pyrite is usually found associated with other sulfides or oxides in quartz veins, sedimentary rock, and metamorphic rock, as well as in coal beds, and as a replacement mineral in fossils.
See pyrite crystals, called pyrite suns, found in coal seams in coal mines.
See fossil brachiopods that have been pyritized.

Pyrite is used commercially for the production of sulfur dioxide, for use in such applications as the paper industry, and in the manufacture of sulfuric acid, although such applications are declining in importance.

(You can always remove items from your cart later if you wish)