COLOR

A third intrinsic characteristic is color. Color is caused byimpurities in the crystallization of the gem. Certain minerals or elements in combination create colors, the way an artist uses different paint colors to create new colors. A diamond, for example, can be pure carbon. This diamond would be colorless. If other elements were present at the crystallization, the color might be yellow or pink or are other color in the spectrum, including black, depending on those elements.

Thus, color refers not to the particular colors in which a particular gem may come, since many gems come in a variety of colors. What is meant is color in the broadest sense, as a general definition of what to do with how light or dark the color or hue is. Intensity means how : or dull the color and tint are.

Certain gems have been valued and prized down through the -imply because of their hue, tint, and intensity. Emeralds (green rubies (red hue), and sapphires (blue hue) that are dark in tint high in intensity have always been valuable, accounting for their traditional distinction with the diamond as precious stones.

color is partially related to the effects of gems on light and light vs. All some gems have to offer is color: they are opaque, that is, solid and impervious to light. The color may be beautiful, but there play of light or "fire," as there is in other gems, and no satiny is there is in chatoyant gems. Opaque gems such as turquoise, lapis lazuli, and jade are lovely and desirable in their own -,t the loveliness could be called one-dimensional.