Thunderegg

In the Pay It Forward package that received from Makita of Academia Celestia there was a 

Thunderegg. 

This morning we decided to crack it open. 

 It was very hard and took quite a bit of hammering to get it to crack.

See how solid they are!

I had always thought that Thunderegg was just another term for a geodes. After researching a little, however, I found out that, geodes are hollow or near-hollow, crystal-lined cavities found in igneous and sedimentary rocks. Thundereggs, on the other hand, are solid or near-solid nodules formed by magmatic and volcanic processes and are found only in volcanic rocks Thundereggs are also known as spherulites, which are radial crystals extending from the center. The minerals forming the crystals in Thundereggs could have come from hot water moving through cracks in the cooling lava rock, or later when mineralized groundwater oozed through. Either way, quartz and other minerals precipitated out of the water into the thunderegg cavity. The crystals began to grow.

Indians found solid nodules near Mt. Jefferson and Mt. Hood in Oregon and thought that when the gods or spirits who inhabited the mountains became angry with one another they would hurl nodules at each other with accompanying thunder and lightning. Hence they called these nodules thundereggs.

 We also decided to make our own geodes.

If you would like to see more about this, click here.