alt Hacker NewsThe Cubes are the most captivating to me. Organic mishmash of polyhedra and assorted blobs is one thing, but perfect cubes is uniquely striking.
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True, but among the minerals with cubic crystal structure it is not unusual for them to be found as crystals that are perfect regular or semiregular polyhedra, with a shape characteristic for the mineral, for instance octahedron (e.g. spinel, diamond), rhombic dodecahedron (e.g. garnet) or cube (e.g. pyrite).
I suppose that the crystals from the picture are of pyrite, which frequently looks like this.
In the antiquity, when what are now called diamonds (the Romans and the Greeks called them "Indian adamants", because they were first encountered by Europeans during the expedition in India of Alexander the Great; "adamant" meant something else in Europe) were very difficult to cut and polish, they were normally used as gems in their natural shape of regular octahedra.
Cutting diamonds from their natural octahedral shape into polyhedra with more facets, e.g. brilliant, was invented much later.
That pyramid shape in the amethyst is what grabbed me. Looks like something straight out of a video game. Incredible.
Pyrite or fool's gold, lovely mathematical perfection and a great etymology to match!
You can buy pyrite cubes on Etsy—I know because I also love them :)
They’re not expensive
What about organic mishmashes that are shaped into cubes?
https://www.science.org/content/article/how-do-wombats-poop-...
Maybe try copper sulphate?
https://crystalverse.com/best-way-to-grow-copper-sulfate-cry...
Crystal growth has been on here before. Let me see if I can find a link or two...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31105320
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30487511
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29779923
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29255511